A MANUAL 



ENGLISH PROSE LITEEATUEE 



AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION. 

Having received from Messrs. Ginn & Company, 
PuhUshers, of Boston, New York, and Chicago, 
paAjmcnt for the copyright in America of my "Manual 
of English Prose Literature,'' I assign the publishing 
rights in that country to the7)i. 



W. MiNTO. 



University of Aberdeen, 
May 18S7. 



A MANUAL 




OP 



ENGLISH PROSE LITERATURE 



BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL 



DESIGNED MAIXLY TO SHOW 



CHAEACTEEISTICS OF STYLE 



BY 



WILLIAM MINTO, M.A. 
If 

PKOFESSOK OF LOUIC AND LITERATURE IN THE 
UNIVEUSITT OF ABEUUEEN 



AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION 



BOSTOX, U.S.A.: 
PCBLISHED BY GIXX & COMPAXY. 

1892. 



48 65 5 5 

AUb ^0 1942 






PEEFACE TO FIKST EDITION. 



The main design of this book is to assist in directing 
students of English composition to the merits and the de- 
fects of our principal writers of prose. It is not, however, 
merely a collection of received critical opinions. It may 
be of some value to the inquirer after general informa- 
tion, as well as to readers more advanced than those kept 
specially in view. 

The characteristics of the work are briefly these. It 
deals with prose alone, assigning books of fiction to the 
department of poetry ; it endeavours to criticise upon a 
methodical plan, fully explained in an Introduction ; it 
selects certain leading authors for full criticism and exem- 
plification ; and it gives unusual prominence to three select 
authors of recent date. 

Little need be said to justify taking up Prose by itself. 
In criticising Poetry we are met by very different con- 
siderations from those that occur in the other kinds of 
composition. What is more, many people not particularly 
interested in Poetry are anxious for practical purposes ♦" 
have a good knowledge of Prose style ; and when Prose 
and Poetry are discussed in the same volume. Prose is 
generally sacrificed to Poetry. 

In excludins Eomance or Fiction from a Manual of 



Vi PEEFACE. 

Prose Literature, I follow a division suggested by the late 
Professor George Moir, in his treatises on Poetry, Romance, 
and Pthetoric. Eomance has a closer affinity with Poetry 
than with Prose : it is cousin to Prose but sister to Poetry; 
it has the Prose features, but the Poetical spirit. 

The advantages of criticising upon a methodical plan in 
terms previously defined, will be at once apparent. Criti- 
cising methodically is like ploughing in straight lines : we 
get over the field not only sooner, but to much better pur- 
pose ; besides, it is easier to see both what we accomplish 
and what we miss. As regards the defining of critical 
terms, it was a favourite position with De Quincey that 
" before absolute and philosophic criticism can exist, we 
must have a good psychology." The present work makes 
little pretension to be philosophic, much less to be abso- 
lute ; but it is an attempt to apply in criticism some of 
the light thrown upon the analysis of style by the newest 
psychology. I am aware that methodical critical dissection 
is considered by many a cold disenchanting process. But 
however cold and disenchanting, it is indispensable to the 
student : it is part of the apprenticeship that every work- 
man must submit to. Before learning to put a compli- 
cated mechanism together, we must take it to pieces, and 
study the parts one by one. If the student goes to work 
at random, picking up a hint here and a hint there, he is 
completely at the mercy of every pedantry that comes to 
him under the sanction of a popular name. The only true 
preservative against literary crotchets and affectations, is 
a comprehensive view of the principal arts and qualities, 
the principal means and ends, of style. 

It may be said that criticism on a uniform plan tends 
to destroy individuality ; that a book constructed on such 
a plan can be nothing but a featureless inventory. This 
can happen only if the plan is narrow, and if specific 
modes of the various qualities of style are not dis- 
tinguished with sufficient delicacy. Uniformity of plan, 



PREFACE. Vli 

80 far from destroying individuality, is really the best way 
to bring individual characteristics into clear prominence : 
if all are subjected to the same examination, the range of 
the questions being sufficiently wide, individualities are 
thrown into relief with much greater distinctness than 
they possibly could be by any other process. In the 
following work, the account of each author contains a 
preliminary sketch of his character ; the analysis that 
follows may be viewed as a means of tracing the outcome 
of that character in his style, and of making his peculiar- 
ities felt more vividly by bringing him into extended 
comparison with others. 

The student should be warned emphatically against 
such blind guides as declaim against the cramping influ- 
ence of rules for composition, and urge us to work out our 
own individuality without regard to the precepts of the 
schools. Sound principles of composition do not repress 
genius, but rather do genius a service by preventing it 
from dissipating itself in unprofitable eccentricities. There 
is every room for variety within the conditions adopted in 
the following work : indeed their chief recommendation is 
that they recognise diversity of style according to diver- 
sity of subject and purpose. Students often put the ques- 
tion. What should we do to acquire a good style ? A 
principal aim in this Manual is to make students familiar 
with the fact that there are varieties of good style. In- 
stead of aiming blindly at the acquisition of " a good style," 
the writer or the speaker should first study his audience, 
and consider how he wishes to affect them ; and then 
inquire how far the rhetorical precepts that he has learnt 
will help him to accomplish his purpose, and how far 
rhetorical teachers can direct him to the causes of success 
in those that have best accomplished the same ends in 
the same circumstances. 

Regarding the prominence given to the modern authors, 
I have only to repeat that the work is intended mainly 



Viii PKEFACE. 

for students, and to say that the most rewarding study for 
them, in the first instance at least, lies in the more recent 
(which are also the higher) developments of prose style. 
With the same eye to the primary destination of the 
work, I have said comparatively little about prose writers 
anterior to the age of Elizabeth. 

The biographies of the various writers are brief; but 
every pains has been taken to make them accurate. The 
biographies of the three selected modern men will be 
found to be more complete than any hitherto published. 

January 25, 1S72. 



PEEFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 



The alterations that I have made in revising this book 
for a second edition have been mainly in one direction. 
I have here and there omitted or modified passages that 
mifiht have seemed to countenance the idea that goodness 
or badness in style might be pronounced upon without 
reference to the effect aimed at by the writer. This I 
have done to prevent the slightest suspicion tliat the 
criticisms in this book consist in the dogmatic application 
of any absolute standard of style. In spite of the toler- 
ably plain disclaimer in my first Preface, this absoluteness 
of view has been not only suspected, but alleged. It is 
true I have not been able, at'ter diligent search, to find 
the quotations by which the allegation was supported ; 
nevertheless, I wish to place the purpose of the book 
in this respect beyond the possibility of honest misap- 
prehension. 

Since the first edition was issued, Mr Trevelyan'a 
biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and Mr " H. A. 
Page " has published two volumes on the Life and Writ- 
ings of De Quincey. My sketches of Macaulay and De 
Quincey can, in consequence, no longer pretend to be 
" more complete than any hitherto published." 

December 22, 1880. 



PEEFACE TO THIHD EDITION. 



For tins issue the book has been revised throughout. 
The chief changes made have been in the short sketch 
of the life of Carlyle, which one is able now to treat 
with greater freedom as well as fuller knowledge. The 
estimate of his character has been allowed to stand, with 
only a few verbal alterations. I have to acknowledge 
many excellent suggestions for the extension of the work 
from critics who have spoken favourably on the whole 
of its plan and execution. At another time I may be 
able to give effect to some of these suggestions : mean- 
time, the tolerably rapid sale of a large edition encourages 
me to believe that the book is found useful in its present 
shape as a contribution to the study of a wide subject. 
'Nobody can be more sensible than myself that I have 
dealt with only a part of the subject. 

July 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 









PAOI 


Elements of Style, 






2-14 


Vocabulary, . 






2 


The Sentence, . 






3 


The Paragi-aph, 






II 


Figures of Speech, 






II 


Qualities of Style, 






14-25 


Intellectual Qualities — Simplicity and Clearness, . , 


15 


Emotional Qualities- 


- 






Strength, 


. 


. . 


19 


Pathos, 


, 


. 


20 


Tiie Ludicrous, 


, 


. • • 


23 


Elegancies of Style— 


-Melody, 


Harmony, Taste, > 


24 


Kinds of Composition, 


, 


• • • • 


26 28 


Description, . 


. 


• • • • 


26 


Narration, , 


, 


« * • * 


27 


Exposition, . 


, 


• • • • 


28 


PerjiUasion, , 


• 


• • • • 


28 



PART L 

DE QUINCEY— MACAULAY— CAELYLE. 

CHAP. I.-THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



Lifts, . • 

ClIARAOTER, 

On NiONS — ciiticisms. 



31 

38 
46 



Xil CONTENTS. 




Elements of Style — 




Vocabulary, ...... 


49 


Sentences, ..... 


50 


Para,<i;raphs, ...... 


53 


Figures of Speech, ..... 


55 


Qualities of Style — 




Simplicity, ...... 


60 


Clearness, ...... 


62 


Strength, . , . , . . 


64 


Pathos, ...... 1 


68 


Humour, ....... 


69 


Melody and Harmony, .... 


71 


Taste, ........ 


72 


Kinds of Composition— 




Description, ..,.,. 


72 


Narration, ...... 


74 


Exposition, ...... 


75 


CHAP. II.-THOMA3 BABINGTON MACAULAY. 


Life, ....... 


77 


Character, ...... 


81 


(^PINIONS, ....... 


85 


Elements of Style — 




Vocabulary, ...... 


87 


Sentences, ...... i 


87 


Paragraphs, ..,..., 


89 


Figures ot Speech, .....< 


97 


Qualities of Style — 




Simplicity, ...... 


> 104 


Clearness, ...... 


107 


Strength, .,...., 


109 


Pathos, ...... 1 


"3 


The Ludicrous, ...... 


114 


Melody, Harmony, Taste, .... 


115 


Kinds of Composition— 




Description, ..,,,., 


"5 


Narration, ..»..., 


1x8 


Exposition, .,...,, 


123 


Persuasion, .».,... 


124 


CHAP. III.— THOMAS CAKLYLE. 




Life, ........ 


131 


Character, ....... 


136 


Opinions, ..,..,., 


14a 









CONTEXTS. 


Xlll 


Elements of Style— 








Vocabulary, 


. 


. 




147 


Sentences, 


, 


. 




149 


Paragraphs, 


. 


. 




152 


Figures of S] 


>eech. 


. 




152 


Qdalities of Style — 








Sim jili city, 


. 


. 




159 


Clearness, 


, 


, 




161 


Strength, 


, 


, 




162 


Pathos, 


, 


, 




163 


The Ludirrons, 


, 




163 


Melody, H:irniony, 


Taste 


1 • • • • 


167 


Kinds of CoMrosiTioN 


— 






Description, 


, 


• 




, 169 


Narration, 


, 


« 




173 


Exposition, 


• 


• 




177 


Persuasiou, 


t 






179 








PAET II. 





PROSE WRITERS IN HISTORICAL ORDER. 



CHAP. I.— PBOSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580. 



Fourteenth Century (Mandeville, Chaucer, Wicliffe, Trevisa) 
t'lF'iEENTH Century (Pecock, Fortescue, Capgrave, Caxton 

Fabyan, &c.), , 
First Half of Sixteenth Century (Berners, More, Elyot 

Hall, Tyndale, Coverdaln, Latimer. Foxe, &c.). 
Third Quarter of Sixteenth Century (Ascham, Wilson 

North, Holinshed, &.C.), .... 



183 
1 86 
iSq 
197 



CHAP. II.-FROM 1580 TO 1610. 



Sip Phtup Sidney— 




Life, ...... 


200 


Character, ..... 


201 


Opinions, ..... 


203 


Elements of Style (Personificatinn), . 


. 204 


Qualities of Style (Pathos, Humour), . 


. 207 


Kinds of Composition, . . • 


> • 212 



XIV 



COM Els' T3. 



Richard Hooker — 

Life, .... 

Character, . . . 

Opinions, . 

Elements of Stj'le, , 

Qualities of Style (Confusion, Pathos, Jlelodj'), 

Kinds of Composition, 

John Ltly, 

Eujjhuism analysed, , 

Other Writers — 

Church Controversialists (Whitgift, Cartwright, Martin Mar 

prelate, Parsons), 
Chroniclers (Stow, Speed), 
Historians (Hayward, Knolles, Daniel), 
Antiquaries (Camden, Spelman, Cotton), 
Maritime Chroniclers (Hakluyt, Purchas, &c.), 
Miscellaneous (Raleigh, Burleigh, Dekker, James I., Overbury), 



Clearness, Strength), 



CHAP. III.— rEOM 1610 TO 1640. 

Francis Bacon — 

Life, . . , 

Character, , , 

Opinions, . . 

Elements of Style, 

Qualities of Style (Simplicity, 

Kinds of Composition (Narration, Exposition, Persuasion), 

Other Writers — 

Divines under James (Field, Andrewes, Morton, Donne), 
Divines under Charles I. (Hall, Chillingworth, Hales), 
Chronicler (Baker), 
Antiquarians (Usher, Selden), 
Historian (Herbert of Cherlniry), 
Miscellaneous (Ben Joiisun, AVotton, Sandys, Lithgow, Bur 
ton. Butter), 



CHAP. IV.— FROM 1640 TO 1670. 



Thomas Fuller — 
Life, . 

Character, . , 

Elements of Style, 
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, 
Humour), , 



Perspicuity, Pathos, Wit and 



264 

265 
266 

269 



COXTli.NTS. 



XV 



Jehf.my Taylor — 

Life, .... 

Character, , . . 

Opinions, . . . 

Elements of Style (Imagery), . 

Qualities of Style (I'eJantry, Strength, Pathos), 

Kinds of Composition (Description, Exposition, Persuasion), 

Abraham Cowley — 

Life, ........ 

Character, ....... 

Elements of Style, ...... 

Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Strength, AVit and Humour), 
Other Writers — 

Theology (Sanderson, Pearson, Baxter, Owen, Fox, Bunyan, &c. 

History (Clarendon, &c.), . 

Miscellaneous (Howell, Heylin, Earle, Sam. Butler, Felltham, 
Browne, More, AVilkins, Digby, Walton, Milton, 
Gauden, Hobbes, Harrington, Sidney, Needham), . 



274 

275 
277 
278 
281 
287 

2S9 
290 
292 
294 

), 299 
304 



305 



CHAP, v.— FROM 1670 TO 1700. 

Sir William Temtle — 

Life, ....... 

Character, ...... 

Opinions, ...... 

Elements of Style (Sentences and Paragraphs), 

Qualities of Style (Preiision, Dignity, Pathos, Wit, Taste), 

Kinds of Composition (Narration), 
John Dryden, ...... 

Other Writers — 

Theology (Barroav, Tillotson, Stillinj,'fleet, Sherlock, 

South, Sjirat, Burnet, Penn, Barclay, Ellwood), 
Philosophy (Locke, Cudworth, Cumberland), 
History (Burnet, Mackenzie, Pepys, Evelyn, &c. ), . 
Miscellaneous (L'Estrange, Blount, Charleton, Halifax, Boyle, 
Newton, Pay), ..... 



316 

318 
320 

321 
327 

332 



336 
340 
341 

343 



CHAP. VI.— FROM 1700 TO 1730. 



Introductoiy Remarks, 

Daniel Defoe — 
Life, . 
Character, 
Opinions, 
Elements of Style, 



346 

347 
349 
350 
35' 



XVI 



CONTENTS. 



Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Clearness, Strength, The 
Ludicrous), .... 

Kinds of Composition (Description, Narration, Exposition), 
Jonathan Swift — 

Life, ...... 

Character, ..... 

Opinions, ..... 

Elements of Style (Similitudes, Allegory, Irony), 

Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Clearness, Strength, Pathos, 
Satire), ..... 

Kinds of Composition (Persuasion), , . 

Joseph Addison — 

Life, ...««. 

Character, ..... 

Opinions, ..... 

Elements of Style (Sentences), 

Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Obscurity, Wit, Melody, Taste), 
Sir Richard Steele — 

Life, ...... 

Character, ..... 

Pathos, ..... 

Humour, ..... 

Other Writers — 

Theology (Atterbury, Hoadley, Clarice, Toland, Collins, Wool- 
ston, Tindal, &c.). 

Philosophy (Mandeville, Wollaston, Shaftesbury, Berkeley), 

History (Echaid, Strype, &c. ), 

Miscellaneous (Bentley, Hughes, Budgell, Arbuthnot, BOL- 

INGBROKE, &C. ), . 



CHAP. VII.— FROM 1730 TO 1760. 

Samuel Johnson — 

Life, ....... 

Character, ...... 

Opinions, ...... 

Elements of Style (Sentences), ... 

Qualities of Style (Simplicity>Clearness, Strength, Pathos, 

Ridicule, and Humour), .... 
Kinds of Composition, .... 

Other Writers — 

Theology (Morgan, Chubb, Butler, Warburton, Leland 

Lardner, Foster, "Wesley, Whitefield, &c.), 
Philosophy (Hutcheson, Hartley, Edwards, Hume), . 
History (Hume, Smollett, Middleton, &,c.), . . 

MiscdlaneovM (Franklin, Melmoth, kc), . . 



CONTENTS. XVU 

CHAP. VIII.— FHOM 1760 TO 1790. 

Edmund Burke— 

Life, ........ 440 

Character, ....... 443 

Opitiioiis, ....... 4/|6 

Elements of Style (Figures of Speech), . . . 448 

Qualities of Style (Stient,'th, Ridicule, Bad Taste), . . 452 

Kinds of Composition (Description, Persuasion), . . 458 

Oliver Goldsmith — 

Life, ........ 461 

Character, ....... 462 

Opinions, ....... 464 

Elements of Style (Sentences, Epigram), . . . 465 
Qualities of Style (Simplicity, Strength, Pathos, Wit and 

Humour), ...... 468 

Other Writers — 

Theology (Horsley, Porteous, Campbell), . . . 473 
Philosophy (Reid, Tucker, Price, Priestley, Beattie, Campbell, 

Lord Karnes, Blair, Adam Smith), . . . 474 

History (Robertson, Gibbon, Boswell), . . . 481 
i/i5ceZZa7ieo?(s (Walpole, "Junius" (Francis), Home Tooke, 

Lord ]\Ionboddo), ..... 486 

CHAP. IX.— FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

William Palky — 

Life, ........ 492 

Ciiaracter, ....... 493 

Opinions, ....... 494 

Elements of Style (Paragraphs), .... 494 

Qualities of Style (Simiilicity, Perspicuity), . . . 497 

Kinds of Composition (Description, Exposition, Persuasion), 499 

Robert Hall — 

Life, ........ 504 

Character, ....... 5°S 

Opinions, ....... 5*^^ 

Elements of Style, ...... 507 

Qualities of Style (Abstruseness, Clearness, Strength, Pathos), 507 

Kinds of Composition (Persuasion), .... 5^* 

Othp:r Writers — 

Thcolngy (Simeon, the Milners, Foster, Parr, Watson, Wnkefield), 513 
Philosophy (Stewart, Brown, Bentham, Coleridge, Malthus, 

Ricardo, Alison, Disraeli), . . . . 5'^ 

History (Mitford, Gillies), ..... 520 

Miscellaneous (Cobbett, llarkiiitosh), ... 5^° 



Kvm 



CONTENTS. 



2HAP. X.— SELECT WRITERS OP THE EARLY PART 
OF THIS CENTURY. 



Tlieology (Chalmers), 
Jlistory (James Mill, Hallam, Alison), 
Philosophy (Hamilton), 
Miscellaneous (JetTrey, Sydney Smith, 
Hazlitt, Wikon, Lockhart), . 





• 




523 
525 

530 


Lamb, 

• 


La n dor, 

• • 


Hunt, 


532 



A MANUAL 



ENGLISH PROSE LITERATURE. 



INTRODUCTION. 

In the case of the authors chosen for full examination, and to some 
extent also in the case of the others, the various peculiarities of 
Style are taken up in a fixed order ; and it may help the reader's 
memory to state this order iit the beginning. 

The preliminary account of each author's Character is intended 
mainly as an introduction to the characteristics of his style ; and 
while it gratilies a natural curiosity in repeating what is known of 
his appearance or personality, does not profess to be a complete 
account of the man in all his relations, public and domestic. 

The analysis of the style proceeds upon the following order : 
Vocabulary, Sentence and Paragrai)h, and Figures of Speech, which 
may be called the Elements of Style ; Simplicity, Clearness, 
Strength, Pathos, Melody, Harmony, and Taste, the Qualities of 
Style; Description, Narration, Kxp<isition, Persuasion, the Kinds 
OF Composition. Upon each of tliese subdivisions we shall make 
some remarks, endeavouring to justify the arrangement wherever 
it seems to be open to objection or misapprehension, 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

VOCABUIjARY. 

Command of language is the aiithor's first requisite. A good 
memory for words is no less indisjiensable to the author than a 
good memory for forms is to the painter. Words are the material 

A 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

that the author works in, and it is necessary above everything that 
he should have a large store at his command. 

Probably no man has ever lieen master of the whole vi'ealth of 
the English vocabulary. The extent of each man's mastery can 
lie ascertained with exactness only by an actual numerical calcu- 
lation, such as has been made for the poetry of Shakspeare and 
Milton. This has nut yet been attem[ited for any of our great 
})rose writers ; and until some enthusiast arises with sufficient 
industry for such a labour, we must be content with a vague 
estimate, formed upon our general impression of freshness and 
variety of diction. 

The simple fact of holding a place among the leaders of liter- 
ature is a proof of extraordinary mastery of language. But can 
we, without actual numeration, distinguish degrees of mastery 1 
Most [)robal)ly we can. We could have told from a general im- 
pression, without actually counting, that Shakspeare uses a greater 
variety of words than Milton. We can perceive, without referring 
to the enlargement of dictionaries, that our language has increased 
in sco[)e and flexibility since the middle of last century. In like 
manner we can fix relatively any author's command of words. We 
may say with confidence that Defoe is more copious and varied 
than Addison, and Burke than Johnson ; and, although our 
judgment of modern writers is more liable to error, we may 
venture to say that De Quincey, Macaulay, and Carlyle show 
a greater command of expression than any prose writers of their 
generation. 

It is interesting, also, to observe on what special subjects an 
author's expression is most copious and original. Perhaps no one 
has an equal abundance of words for all purposes. From the in- 
evitable limitation of human faculties, no man, however " myriad- 
minded," can give his attention to everything. Inevitably every 
man falls into special tracks of observation, reflection, and im- 
agination ; and each man accumulates words, and expresses him- 
self with fluency and variety, concerning the subjects that are 
oftenest in his thoughts. Were we to apply the test of arithmetic, 
we should find that two men using very much the same number of 
words upon the whole, have the depths and shallows of their verbal 
wealth at very different places. 

To mark out fully where a vocabulary is weak and where it is 
strong, we should have to anticipate the qualities of style and the 
kinds of composition. A man that can write freely and eloquently 
in one strain or in one species of composition, may be dry and 
barren in another strain or another species of composition. Most 
writers have some one vein that they peculiarly and obviously 
excel in. Thus Addison is rich in the language of melodious and 
elegant simplicity, Paley in the language of homely simplicity, 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 3 

De Quiiiccy in the lanL-uacre i>f elaborate statelir.ess, ilacaulay in 
the language of brilliant energy. 

Here it may be well to point out — and the caution is nf snch 
importance that it may have to be repeated — that the divi.sion.s in 
the following analysis are not, in the language of the logicians, 
mutually exclusive. Following Professor 1 Iain's Rhetoric we con- 
sider style under three ditlerent aspects — ajiproach it from three 
ditl'erent sides ; but we do not treat of different things. In each 
of the divisions the same things are examined, only from different 
points of view. Each of these divisions, were our examination to 
be ideally thorough, should exhibit every possible excellence and 
defect of style. We might take up all the notable points in an 
author's style under what we have called the " Elements of Style " 
— the choice of words, plain and figurative, and the arrangement 
of these in sentences and paragraphs. We might, again, take up 
everything remarkable under the " Qualities of ^Style " — simplicity, 
clearness, and so forth : a style is good or bad according as it pro- 
duces, or fails to produce, certain etl'ects. Finally, we might com- 
prehend the whole art of style under the " Kinds of Compo.^ition " : 
every excellence of style is either good description, good narration, 
good ex]iosition, good persuasion, or good ]ioetry. The dnisions 
are far from being mutually exclusive. Wire we to say in one 
department all that might be said, we should leave nothing for 
the others. The sole justification of having three, an I not one, 
is practical convenience. There must of necessity be occasional 
repetitions, but each department has certain arts of style that are 
best regarded from its own particular i)oint of view. 

THE SENTENCE. 

The construction of sentences is an important part of style. 
Sometimes, indeed, it is exjiresscd by the word sti/h, as if it con- 
stituted the whole art. With a nearer approach to accuracy, it is 
sometimes called the viechdiiirnl part of style. This designalion 
may be allowed, if sentence-building is loosely taken to include the 
construction of paragraphs and tlie general method of a discourse. 
It is probably true th.it the construction of sentences and of para- 
graphs, in so far as they are intended for the communication of 
knowledge, may be suijected to more precise rules than any other 
processes of the art of composition. The ])rinciples en whi( h these 
rules are founded are capable of extension to the method of whole 
chapters or essays. But it must be borne in mind that a writer 
can benefit from direct precept chiefly as regards the easy, clear, and 
complete communicatinn of what is in his thoug' ts ; for any efiect 
of style beyond this, precepts are of comparatively little service. 

Special Artifices of Construction. — One may d«ail)t whither 
it would be practicable to make anything like a comprehensive 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

collortion of all the forms of sentence possilile in En.siHsli. At 
any rate, it has not yet been done. Writers on composition have 
hitherto attempted nothin^r more than to distinguish a few well- 
marked modes of construction. 

I. The Periodic Structure. — "A period," says Campbell, "is 
a complex sentence, wherein the meaning remains suspended till 
the whole is finished. . . . The criterion of a period is this: 
If you stop anywhere before the end, the preceding words will not 
form a sentence, and therefore cannot convey any determined 
sense." This is the common definition of a period, and it is 
probably dithcidt to go farther without committing one's self to 
general statements that will not apply to every period. At the 
risk of being slightly inaccurate, it might be well to go a little 
deeper into the substance of the periodic structure. What exactly 
do we imply by saying that the meaning is suspended till the 
close 1 We imply that the reader's interest is ke])t in suspense 
till the close. And how is this done? Generally, it may be said, 
by bringing on predicates before what they are predicated of, and, 
which is virtnally a similar process, qualifications before what they 
qualify ; letting us know descriptive adjuncts, results, conditions, 
alternatives, oratorical contrasts, of subjects, states, or actions, be- 
fore we formally know the particular subjects, states, or actions 
contemplated by the writer. Thus, in the following sentence — 

"On wliatevor side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us ifl 
his invention ; " 

the sul)ject — in this case the key-word — is reserved to the last, 
and the adverbial adjuncts of the predicate are stated before the 
]iredic.ite itself. A statement is made in a form showing that it 
lias a bearing npon something to follow, and our curiosity is awak- 
ened to know what that something is. " On whatever side we con- 
template Homer." The next statement, "what principally strikes 
us," contracts our curiosity into a more definite field, and thereby 
sharpens our interest. Still it points us forward. There is a jiro- 
gress from the indefinite to the definite, and, in the case of this 
particidar period, a growing interest, which is not relieved till we 
reach the very last word. In a loose structure of sentence, which 
may be called the natural or usual structure in English, the pre- 
dicate follows the subject, and qualifying adjuncts follow what 
they qualify : we know the subject before we know the attribute 
predicated of it or annexed to it. In a period, on the other hand, 
the writer, stating the predicate or qualifying adjuncts of a word 
before the word itself, may be said to circumvent that word — to 
make (as the Greek pn-iudos signifies) a " circuit " about it, to bring 
its i)redicate or its adjuncts, as the case may be, from behind it and 
place them before it. 



/ 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 6 

Campbell speaks of the period as a "complex" sentence. If 
the above view of the period is accepted as substantially correct, 
"complexity," in the gianmiatical sense, must be regarded as an 
accident of the period, and not part of its essence. The statements 
of other writers on composition warrant us in applying the term 
period to sentences that are not complex. Professor Bain simply 
says that, " in a periodic sentence, the meaning is suspended until 
the close," and makes no mention of a periodic sentence being neces- 
sarily com})lex. And Whately gives, as an example of periodic 
structure, tlie following " simple " sentence : " One of the most cele- 
brated of men for wisdom and for prosperity was Solomon." 

It would be well if the application of the term periodic were a 
little extended. When qualifying adjuncts are brought in before 
their exact bearing is known, and in such a way as to stimulate 
curiosity, a peculiar efi'ect is produced ; and we should be justified 
by the derivation of the word "periodic" in applying it to all 
marked cases of such antici[)ation. Practically, indeed, the word 
is applied in the wider sense. If Camplte I's deHnition were rigor- 
ously adhered to, the term periodic could be applied only to sen- 
tences that keep the reader in suspense up to the very last word. 
But, as a matter of fact, the term is applied much more widely. 
We speak of writers as having a periodic style, although their 
works contain few complete periods, according to Campbell's 
"criterion of a period." Since, therefore, the narrow definition of 
the term is practically disri'garded, it would be well to come to a 
formal understanding of its latitude. The term " period " might 
still be retained for a periodic sentence, rigorously complete or 
nearly so. But it would probably better suit the prevailing 
ajiplication of the term "periodic" to accept it as a name for 
such anticipations as I have roughly indicated — to call every 
style " i)eriodic " where such anticipations habitually occur. Of 
this periodic style, the most eminent of modern masters is De 
Quiucey. 

In the loose sentence — in a sentence so constructed as to be 
noticeably "loose" — qualifying and explanatory adjuncts are 
tacked on after the words they refer to. This might be copiously 
exenii)litied from the writings of Carlyle, and, in a less degree, 
from Addison. 

2'he efect of the periodic structure is to keep the mind in a state 
of uniform or increasing tension until the denouement. This is the 
effect stated in its ultimate and most general form. The effect 
that a reader is conscious of receiving varies greatly with the 
nature of the subject-matter. When the subject is easy and 
familiar, the reader, finding the sentence or clause come to an end 
as soon as his expectations are satisfied, receives an agrecal)le im- 
pression of neatness and finish. \\'hen the subject-matter is un- 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

familiar, or when the suspense is unduly proloncced, the perioilio 
structure is intolerably tedious, or intolerably exas]»eratin,L:, accorii 
ing to the temper of the reader. In impassioned writing the 
period has a moderating effect, the tension of the mind till the 
key-word is reached preventing a dissipation of excitement, 

Dr Blair says that the periodic style is " the most pompous, 
musical, and oratorical manner of composing," and that it " gives 
an air of gravity and dignity to composition." 'Jlie Doctor jtro- 
bably had in his eye such periodic writers as Hooker, Sir Thomas 
Browne, and Jolinson. Undoubtedly hmg periodic sentences give 
great scope for pomp, music, gravity, dignity, and such effects, but 
these are not necessary attributes of the jjeriod. A period, as we 
have defined it, need not be h)ng; and a lively interest may be 
sustained as well as a grave interest. 

Advantages and disaduantarfes of the periodic structure. — To 
some extent we have anticipated these in conisidering the effect 
of the period. 

In light subjects, neatness or finish is generally regarded as 
an advantage. Yet even in this a caution is needed ; rounded 
neatness, if it recurs too frequently, may become tiresome. The 
caution can probably be given in no more definite form than 
Hamlet's : "Be not too periodic neither, but let your own discretion 
be your tutor." 

In unfamiliar subjects, care must be taken that the consideni- 
tions kept in suspense be not too numerous or too abstruse. De 
Quincey has vividly described "the effect of weariness and repul- 
sion which may arise from this single vice of unwieldy compie- 
hensiveness in the structure of sentences." " Those who are not 
accustomed to watch the effects of composition upon the feelings, 
or have had little experience in voluminous reading pursued for 
weeks, would scarcely imagine how much of downright physical 
exhaustion is produced by what is technically called the periodic 
style of writing. It is not the length, the dTrepavToXoyia, the par- 
alytic flux of words. It is not even the cumbrous involution of 
parts within parts, separately considered, that bears so heavily 
upon the attention. It is the suspense, the holding on of the 
mind until what is called the diroSuTis, or coming round of tha 
sentence, commences. This it is which wears out the faculty of 
attention. A sentence, for example, begins with a series of i/s; 
perhaps a dozen lines are occupied with expanding the condi- 
tions under which something is affirmed or denied. Here you 
cannot dismiss and have done with the ideas as you go along; 
for as yet all is hypothetic — all is suspended in air. The con- 
ditions are not fully to be understood until yon are acquainted 
with the dependency : you must give a separate attention to each 
clause of this complex hypothesis, and yet, having done that by a 



KLKMENTS OF blYLE. 7 

painful effiirt, yon have done notliing at all ; for you must exercise 
a reacting attention thrnugh the corresponding latter sectinn, in 
order to follow out its relations to all parts of the hypothesis which 
sustains it." These remarks point to the abuse rather than to the 
use of the periodic style, and were directed against a prevailing 
style in newspaper "leaders." It is obviously necessary, for the 
avoiding of perplexity, not to bring in too many or too abstruse 
considerations before their bearing is made known. A writer with 
the least regard for his readers, should see that by so doing he 
exacts too severe an effort of attention. It may safely be laid 
down that the longer a period is, the simpler should be both the 
language and the matter of the suspended clauses. Still more 
must this be kept in view when the princii)le of the periodic 
structure is extended to paragrajjhs or chapters. 

]\lr Herbert Spencer in his ' Essay on the I'hilosophy of Style,' 
and Professor Bain in his Rhetoric, advocate what we have de- 
fined as periodic structure, on the ground that it enables us to 
apprehend the meaning of a complex statement with less risk of 
confusion. The advantage of jilacing qualifying wonls before the 
object that they r|nalify is briefly stated in Bain's llhetoric, under 
the "order of words." 

The legitimate use of the periodic structure in impassioned prose 
is liest seen in the so-called " [)rose fantasies" of I)e Quincey. 

II. Sentences studiously Long and studiously Short. — No 
small element in the mechanical art of sentence-building is the 
adjustment of the length of the sentence. One of the greatest 
faults in our early writers is that their sentences are too long. 
They did not know when to stop. They seem to have been afraid 
to let a sentence out of their hands till they had tacked on all the 
more impoitant qualifications of the main statement. They thus 
frequently ran on to a most cumbrous length ; and when they did 
proceed to a new sentence, frequently, took no pains to connect it 
with the preceding main statement, but started off m pursuit of 
some subordinate idea suggested by one of the qualifying state- 
ments. So defective, indeeii, were they in sentence-structure, that 
it is dangerqus for a beginner in composition to spend much time 
in their company. And one great part of this deficiency was, that 
they did not know when to end a sentence, or, in other words, that 
they had not the art of beginning a new sentence at the proper 
point 

It would be absurd to prescribe a definite limit for the length of 
sentences, or even to say in what proportion long and short should 
be intermixed. Here, too, discretion is the tutor. Only it must 
be borne in mind that a long series either of very short sentences 
or of very long sentences is tiresome. 

The distinction between the " periodic style " {style periodique) 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

and the " abru[)t style" {style co^ipc) depends to a great extent 
upon the length of the sentences. The Periodic style (as we see 
from its description by De Quincey) implies something more than 
the use of the periodic structure ; it im))lies long periods, elabo- 
rately constructed, holding "a flock of clauses" in suspense, and 
moving with a stately rhythm. So in the Abrupt style, the short 
sentence is an important feature, although, as appears in the style 
of JNIacaulay, it is not the only feature, i 

The use of a startling series of short sentences may almost be 
said to be a feature of English oratory. AVe find it in the journals 
of the Elizabethan Parliaments ; and, later, in the writings of 
Bolingbroke, in the published speeches of Chatham, and in the 
speeches and writings of Burke. 

The long sentence, formed of several members gradually increas- 
ing in length so as to make a climax in sound, woul I universally 
be designated oratorical. It was much affected by .Cicero. 

III. The Balanced Sentence. — " When the different clauses of 
a compound sentence are made similar in form, they are said to be 
balanced." 

The artifice of constructing successive clauses upon the same 
plan is said to have l)een introduced into our language from the 
Italian. Wherever it came from, it begins to appear noticeably 
about the middle of the sixteenth century. In Elizabeth's reign 
it became very fashionable. It was one feature of Lyly's 
"Euphuism." It held its ground through the reign of James, 
appearing even in booksellers' advertisements and in the titles 
of maps. One of John Speed's maps is entitled, 'A new and 
accurate map of the world, drawn according to the truest desa'ip- 
tions, latest discoveries, and best observations, that have been made 
by English or strangers.' 

The advantages of the balanced structure are pointed out briefly, 
but fully, in Pain's Rhetoric. It is a pleasure in itself; when not 
carried to excess, it is a help to the memory; and, when the bal- 
anced clauses stand in antithesis, it lends emphasis to the opposi- 
tion. We find also in practice that it serves as a guide to the 
proper arrangement of tiie important words. Undar a natural 
sense of effect the important word is often reserved for the last 
jjlace, the best position for emphasis. Further, in impassioned 
prose, as in Raleigh's invocation to Death, and De Quiucey's imi- 
tations — the invocations to Opium and to Solitude — balance has 
something of the effect of metre. 

1 While speaking of these general distinctions of style, we may note a third, 
the Pointe<l stjie consisting m '' the profuse employment of the Balanced Sen- 
tence, in conjunction with Antithesis, Ejiigram, and Climax." How far the.se 
distinctions are fi-oni being distinctive, in the sense of indicating inconipatibte 
modes of comi'osition, may be judged from the fact that Vi Johnson often em- 
ploys all the three "styles'" in one paragraph. 



ELE.MKNTS OF SIVLE. 9 

In the case of balance, much more than in the case of the 
{leriodic structure, it is necessary to beware of guing to excess. 
There is almost no limit to the means of disguising the periodic 
structure. The reader may be entertained with such variety in 
the parts of a period, that he enjoys its bracing effects without 
knowing the cause. But the balanced structure cannot be so 
disguised : it is like metre — to disguise it is to destroy it. Clauses 
are constructed on the same i)lan, or they are not; correspomling 
words occupy corresponding places in their respective clauses, or 
they do not. And while the balanced structure is prominent, and 
thus apt to fatigue the ear, it is very catching ; it has a great 
power of enslaving whoever emi)loys it heedlessly. Several of our 
writers, such as .Johnson, "Junius," and Macaulay, allowed their 
ear to be captivated, and not only em|)loyed balanced forms to 
excess, but often added tautologous and otherwise questionable 
clauses from an irresistible craving for the familiar measure. 

.IV. The Condensed Sentence. — "This is a sentence abbrevi- 
ated by a forced anci unusual construction." 

Anything so violently artihcial as this can be used but seldom 
without giving offence. It was a favourite artifice with Gibbon. 
In the present day, when, used at all, it is used chiefly for comic 
purposes. Headers of Dickens and his imitators are familiar with 
such terms as "drew tears from his eyes and a handkercliief from 
his pocket." Occasionally we find it in works of more serious 
pretensions, as in Mr Forster's Life of Goldsmith; but nobody 
now uses it for serious puri)Oses so often as Gibbon did. 

General Considerations. — I. The Emphatic Places of a 
Sentence. — "As in an army on the march, the fighting columns 
are |)laced front and rear, and the baggage in the centre, so tlie 
emphatic })arts of a sentence should be found either in the be- 
ginning or in the end, subordinate and matter-of-course expressions 
in the middle." 

There is nothing more urgently required for the improvem.ent 
of our sentences than a constant study to observe this principle. 
The special artifices that we have mentioned are good only for 
certain modes of composition and for i)articular puiposes, and 
become offensive when too often repeated; but it is dillicult to 
conceive when there would be an impropriety in j)lacing inqiortant 
words where the reader naturally ex[iects to find them. The 
reader's attention falls easily and naturally upon what stands at 
the beginning and what stands at the end, unless obviously in- 
troductory in the one case, or obviously rounding off in the other. 
The beginning and the end are the natural places for the im- 
portant words. This ariangement is conducive both to clearness 
and to elegance : it i)reveuts confusion, and is an aid to justness 
of emphasis. As important words need not occupy absolutely the 



10 INTIIODUCTION. 

first place nor absoli;tely the last, but at the beginning may be 
preceded by qvialifying clauses, and at the end may be followed 
by unemi)hatic appendages that are not of a nature to distract 
attention, we are not required to make unnatural inversinns or 
to take unidiomatic liberties of any kind. If a writer finds a 
construction stitf and unnatural, he may be sure that he has 
not succeeded in throwing the emphasis where it should be 
thrown; if he has not buried the imitortant words in the depths 
of the sentence, he has i»roliably d^ne worse : he has probably 
drawn off the reader's attention from the words altogether, and 
fixed it where it should seldom or never be fixed — upon the 
form. 

The following out of this principle is not so easy as it appears. 
One is safe to assert that it will never be carried out thoroughly 
till it is made an important part of school drill. Without some 
such long and early training, a scrupulous purist in this respect 
might hang as long over his sentences as Lord Tennyson is said 
to hang over his lines, and commit blunders after all. In liring- 
ing sentences into harmony with this principle of arrangement 
alone, there is a field for endless variety of school exercises in 
composition. 

II. Unity of Sentence. — Upon this point it is especially 
dangerous to lay down any abstract rule. living's statements, 
that "a sentence or period ought to express one entire thought 
or mental proposition," and that "it is improper to connect in 
language things which are se|>arated in reality," are much too 
dogmatic and cram})ing. Separate particulars must often be 
brought together in the same sentence. 

The only universal cantion that can be given is, to beware of 
distracting from the effect of the main statement by particulars 
not immediately relevant. " Every part should be subservient 
to one princij)al aflfirniation." 

The advice not to overcrowd a sentence may have to yield to a 
law of the paragraph concerning the due subordination in form 
of whatever is suboidinate in meaning. " A statement merely 
explanatory or qualifying, put into a sentence apart, acquires a 
dangerous prominence." 

Most of the faults specified by Blair as breaches of "unity" 
occur in connection with other arts of sentence-structure. " Ex- 
cess of })arenthetical clauses " is an abuse of the periodic structure, 
objectionable only in so far as it imposes too severe a strain upon 
the retentive powers of the reader. It is a fault often committed 
by De Quincey, whose own powers of holding several things in the 
mind at once without confusion sometimes betrayed him into for- 
getting that all are not equally gifted. The fault of not "bring- 
ing the sentence to a full and perfect close " — so flagrant in our 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 11 

early writers — is not likely to be committed by any one aware 
of the value of the end of a sentence as the place for important 
words. 

The specialties of the sentence in Narrative and in Description are 
examined at length in Bain's Ilhetoric (The Se.vtenck, sec. 25). 
He says that " the only rule that can be observed in distinguish- 
ing the sentences is to choose the larger breaks in the sense." 

THE PARAGRAPH. 

Professor Bain was the first, so far as I am aware, to consider 
how far rules can be laid down for the perspicuous construction of 
paragraphs. Other writers on composition, such as Campbell, Lord 
Karnes, Blair, and Whately, stop short with the sentence. 

De Quincey, a close student of the art of composition, felt the 
importance of looking beyond the arrangement of the parts of a 
sentence, and philosophised in a desultory way concerning the 
bearing that one sentence should have upon another. " It is use- 
less," he says, in one of his uncollected papers, "to judge of an 
artist until you have some principles in the art. The two capital 
secrets in the art of prose composition are these: ist. The philo- 
soi)hy of transition and connection; 2dly, The way in which sen- 
tences are made to mollify each other ; for the most powerful effects 
in written eloquence arise out of this reverberation, as it were, from 
each other, in a rapid succession of sentences ; and because some 
limitation is necessiry to the length and complexity of t^entences, 
in order to make this interde[)en(lency felt : hence it is that the 
Germans have no eloquence." These "two capital secrets" cor- 
respond very nmch with Professor Bain's two first rules of the 
paraura})h. 

I have examined at considerable length the paragraph arrange- 
ment of Macaulay. Very few writers in our language seem to 
have paid much attention to the construction of paragraphs. 
Macaulay is perhaps the most exemplary. Bacon and Temple, 
from their legal and diplomatic education, are much more meth- 
odical than the generality. Johnson is also entitled to praise. 
But none of them can be recommended as a model. 

FIGURES OF SPEECH. 

In most treatises on composition, the consideration of figurative 
language occupies a large space. Of the small portion of Aris- 
totle's Rhetoric devoted to com{)osition purely, it constitutes about 
one half. So in the works of Campbell, Kames, and Blair, par- 
ticularly in Kames's 'Elements of Criticism,' the origin, nature, 
limits, minute divisions, the uses and the abuses of figures of 
speech, are examined and exem{)lified at great length. And yet 
these later writers profess to be much more concise than " tho 



12 I^'TI;o[)UCTIo^^ 

ancient critics and grammarians," and to have discarded many 
vexatiously subtle subdivisions. 

The chief thing wanted in the ancient divisions and subdivisions 
Avas some broad principle of classification. This is su[)plied by 
referring figures to their origin in the operations of the intellect. 
A pro[ier basis for a classificatioii is found in the ultimate analysis 
of tliL'se operations. When the classes thus instituted — Figures of 
Similarity, Figures of C<mtiguity, and P'igures of Contrast — have 
gathered up all the figures that belong to them respectively, very 
few remain unclassified. Some of those that do remain are dis- 
tinguished from the others on a different principle. Such figures 
as interrogation, exclamation, and apostrophe, are departures from 
the ordinary structure of sentences, and thus are distinguished 
from such figures as are departures from the ordinary application 
of words. According to the distinction of the old grammarians, 
they are "figures," as distingnshed from "tropes." So much for 
the classification of figures. It is not quite complete — it leaves 
hyperbole, climax, innuendo, and irony unclassified; but it is a 
great improvement upon the old chaos. 

The truth is, that the subjects included in books of composition 
under the head of Figures of Speech do not admit of a logical 
classification. Under that head rhetoricians have gradually ac- 
cumulated all artifices of wtyle that do not belong to the choice 
of plain words and the structure of sentences. Such an accumula- 
tion could hardly be other than heterogeneous.^ 

One of the ancient terms it might be well to revive and redefine 
in accordance with its derivation and original application — namely, 
the word " trope." At present, when used at all, it is used loosely 
as a kind of general synonym for a figure of speecli. By Quintilian 
it was defined as an opposite to the term figure — designating, as 
we have just seen, extraordinary applications of individual words 
in contrast to irregular constructions of sentence. Such a distinc- 
ti<in is of no practical value — it would be useful to have a special 
term for irregular constructions of sentence ; but it would be im- 
l)Ossible to restrict the word figure to such an application. Apart 
from that, the word trope is not treated with mucli delicacy when 
set up as an expression for all " figures of speech " (in the wide 
sense), except irregular constructions of sentence. I would propose 
to rescue the word from an application so promiscuous, and to settle 
it in its original application as a name for a much narrower class 
of artifices. 

Interpreted by its derivation, trope signifies a word " turned," 

^ Had paragraph structure been sooner recdgiiised, tbe so-called fi,£;ure of 
speecli, "climax," would probably liave been relerred to the ]iarauniph as a 
sjiecial artitice in paragraph construction. Climax is no more a figure of speech 
than the periodic, the balanced, or the condensed structure of sentence. 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 13 

diverted from its ordinary apjjlication, and pressed, as it were, into 
special service. Now only a limited niimlier of figures of speech 
consist in this extraordinary iise of sinrf/e lonrds ; it Avould be con- 
venient to have a common designation for tliein. What could be 
more proper than to use for that designation the existing word 
trope 1 

To vindicate the restriction of a term to a special class of figures, 
even when that restrictkni is warranted l)y the derivation of the 
term, we must show th^occasions arise for speaking of that class 
of figures collectively. In this case such a vindication is easy. 
There are writers, such as De Quincey, who use comparatively few 
formal similitudes, and yet use metaphor, personification, synec- 
doche, or metonymy, in almost eveiy sentence. On the other 
hand there are writers, such as Macaulay, whose diction in its 
general texture is plain, but who employ a great many formal 
similitudes. Both classes of writers are figurative, but the one 
class is rich in tropes, the other in aimiles. 

The want of such a word as trope, thus defined, has led to an 
abuse of the word metai)hor by popular writers. ]\letaphor has 
been taken to supply the want. In strict language, metaphor 
means a similituile implied in tlic use of a single word, witliout 
the formal sign of comparison ; but it is often loosely used as a 
common designation for synecdoches and metonymies as well. 
The temptation to such an abuse is withdrawn by reviving the 
original meaning of the word trope. 

The chief points that we shall notice under Figures of Speech, 
besides the profusion of any one figure or class of figures, are the 
sources of similitudes and compliance with the conditions of eflec- 
tive comparison. The sources of an author's similitudes are often 
peculiarly interesting, as affording a means of measuring the cir- 
cumference of his knowletlge. We cannot, to be sure, by such 
means, take a very accurate measure, but we can tell what booka 
a man has dipped into, may discover what writers he has plagiar- 
ised from, and may be able to guess how his interests are divided 
between books and the living world. What casts doulit upon our 
conclusions is the fact that so many writers are similitude-hunters, 
are very often on the watch for good similitudes ; and the conse- 
quent presumjition that they utilise a large proportion of their 
knowledge. Tliomas Fuller is one of the most versatile, as he is 
one of the most delightful, masters of allusion. He would seem 
to have turned almost every item of his knowledge to account, and 
thus has a greater appearance of learning than many men of really 
profounder erudition and wider knowledge of the world. 

The conditions of effective comparison exhaust all that can be 
said in the way of advice concerning the use of figures. When a 
similitude is addressed to the understanding — is intended merely 



14 IKTIIODUCTION. 

to make one's meaning more perspicuous — care must be taken that 
the point of the comparison be clear, that there be no distracting 
circumstances, and that the comparison be more intelligible to 
those addressed than the thing compared. When a similitude is 
intended to elevate or to debase an object by displaying its high 
or its low relations, care must be taken that the comparison be, in 
the estimation of those addi'essed, really higher or (as the case may 
be) lower than the object ; farther, that it be not extravagantly and 
offensively out of level, and that it be fresh. These are the main 
conditions of effective comparison for purposes of exposition, and 
for persnasive eulogy or ridicule. In comparisons designed only 
for embellishment, the conditions are novelty and harmony, or, as 
it might also be called, propriety. As regards the number of 
figures employed, every writer must be guided by his own dis- 
cretion. The critic of style can only remark, that if writers were 
always careful to make their comparisons effective for a purpose of 
some kind, the number would be considerably reduced. , 

In treating of an author's figures, as in treating of his vocabulary, 
we might anticipate most of the qualities of his style. Figures 
may be simple, or stirring, or grand, or touching, or witty, or 
humorous. A full account of a man's figurative language would 
display nearly all his characteristics. 

Asa sort of postscript to the Elements of Style, we may easily 
define the mutual relation of two terms often used in contradis- 
tinction — Manner and Matter. As distinguished from matter, 
manner includes everything that we have designated by the 
general title Elements of Style — not only the choice of words 
and the structure of the parts of a discourse, but everything 
superinduced upon the subject of discourse by way either of com- 
parison or of contrast. 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

The division of qualities into purity, perspicuity, ornament, pro- 
priety, is open to the objection of being too vague. This appears 
in amendments of the scheme proposed by different critics. Some 
would strike off "propriety" as being common to all the other 
qualities. Others, confining propriety to the choice of individual 
words, would retain it and strike off " purity " as being a part of pro- 
priety thus restricted. Others still would dispense with "ornament " 
as a separate division, and discuss ornaments under perspicuity and 
propriety. And Blair maintains that "all the qualities of a good 
style may be ranged under two heads, perspicuity and ornament." 

Such vague fumbling is inevitable so long as qualities of style 
are viewed in the abstract, and without reference to their ends. 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 15 

Campbell was the first to suggest a substantial principle of classi- 
fication by considering style as it affects the mind of the reader. 
His analysis is not perfect, but he was upcm the right track. " It 
appears," he says, "that besides purity, which is a quality entirely 
grammatical, the five simple and original qualities of style, con- 
sidered as an object to tJte iiiuhrstand'mrj, the imaginatioH, tlie pas- 
sions, a7id the ear, are perspicuity, vivacity, elegance, animation, 
and music." That so many writers on composition should have 
fallen back from this comparatively thorough analysis to bad ver- 
sions of the old analysis, is not much to their credit. 

One of the causes of imperfection in Campbell's analysis was his 
desire to separate rigidly between the effects of style or manner, 
and the effects of the subject-matter. This cannot be done : the 
manner must always be viewed in relation to the matter. In order 
to get at qualities of style, we must first make an analysis of the 
effects of a composition as a whole — matter and manner together ; 
not till then are we in a position to consider how far the effect is 
due to the manner and how far to the matter. For example, if a 
composition is readily intelligible, we consider how far this is due 
to the familiarity of the subject-matter, and how far to the author's 
treatment, to his choice and arrangement of words, and to his 
illustrations. Nothing could be more absurd than Blair's confi- 
dent assertion that the difficulty of a subject can never be pleaded 
as an excuse for want of perspicuity ; that if an author's ideas are 
clear, he should always be able to make them perspicuous to others. 
Perspicuous, as Blair understands the word, means easili/ seen 
through ; and it may be doubted whether any powers of style 
could make the generalisations of a science easily and immediately 
apparent to a mind not familiar with the particulars. Style can 
do much, but it has a limit. It can never make a subject natu- 
rally abstruse as easily understood as a subject naturally simple, a 
treatise on Logic as perspicuous as a statement of familiar facts. 
So with compositions that address the feelings ; the master of style 
cannot but work at a disadvantage when his subject is not natu- 
rally impressive. 

The chief aim of the following brief remarks on Qualities of 
Style is to define prevailing critical terms as closely as may be 
with reference to the ultimate analysis here adopted. 

rNTELLECTUAL QUALITIES OF STYLE- 
SIMPLICITY AND CLEARNESS. 

Aristotle recognises but one intellectual quality, clearness. The 
first requisite of composition is tiiat it be clear. So Quintilian : 
" The first virtue of eloquence is perspicuity." In Campbell's 
scheme, also, " the first and most essential of the qualities of style 
is persjjicuity." 



1 6 INTllODUCTION. 

Blair, while he reduced all qualities to perspicuity and ornament, 
was led, in his consideration of perspicuity, to another intellectual 
quality — namely, precision. He described precision as "the high- 
est part of the quality denoted by perspicuity," and Uien made the 
following contrast between precision and perspicuity " in a quali- 
fied sensa" " It appears," he said, " that an author may, m a 
gaalijied sense, be perspicuous, while yet he is far from being pre- 
cise. He uses proper words and proper arrangements ; he gives 
you the idea as clear as he conceives it himself, — and so far he is 
perspicuous: but the ideas are not very clear in his own mind; 
they are loose and general, and therefore cannot be expressed with 
precision. All subjects do not equally require precision. It is 
sufficient, on many occasions, that we have a general view of the 
meaning. The subject, perhaps, is of the known and familiar 
kind ; and we are in no hazard of mistaking the sense of the author, 
though every word which he uses be not precise and exact. Few 
authors, for instance, in the English language, are more clear and 
perspicuous, on the whole, than Archbishop Tillotson and Sir Wil- 
liam Temple ; yet neither of them are remarkable for precision." 

The fact is, that if the words are taken in their ordinary senses, 
precision is not a mode of perspicuity, but a quality in some meas- 
ure antagonistic to perspicuity. Blair might have drawn a line 
between perspicuity and precision, and made them two separate 
intellectual qualities. The division would not have been the best, 
but it would have been a real division, and better than none at all. 

Aristotle's single virtue of "clearness" or "perspicuity" needs 
to be analysed before we can characterise authors with discrimina- 
tion. We need two broad divisions, simplicity and clearness, and 
a subdivision of clearness into general clearness and minute clear- 
ness. This more exact division I shall briefly explain : it is not 
arbitrary dictatorial sequestration of terms to unfamiliar ap])lica- 
tions, but a breaking up of such sequestrations, and a reconciliation 
of the language of criticism with the language of familiar speech. 

When designations of merit are loose and indeterminate, they 
may sometimes be cleared up by a reference to designations of de- 
merit It is so in this case. What are the faults of style as a means 
of communicating knowledge % We at once say abstruseness and 
confusion. Returning, then, to the positive side, we ask ourselves 
what are the corresponding merits — what are the opposites of 
abstruseness and confusion — and we have no difficulty in seeing 
that the main intellectual " virtues " of style are simplicity and 
clearness. 

Sinii)licity and abstruseness are relative terms. Whatever is 
hard to understand is not simple, is abstruse, recondite ; and what 
is hard for one man may be easy for another. The phraseology of 
natural science or of medicine is hard to the unlearned reader, but 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 17 

easy as a piimer to the naturalist or the physician. Abstract terms 
are generally unpopular, and generally disliked as dry, bookish, 
scholastic ; yet they are said to come to Scotchmen more naturally 
than the concrete language of common things. Want of simpli- 
city is not an absolute fault ; it is a fault only in relation to the 
persons addressed. A writer addressing himself ])urposely to a 
learned audience only wastes his strength by beating about the 
bush for language universally familiar. 

Clearness, as opposed to confusion, is not so much relative to 
the capacity of the persons addressed. Ambiguous language — 
words so arranged as to convey an impression ditFerent from what 
the writer intends, may mislead learned and unlearned alike. Con- 
fused expression is not justifiable under any circumstances, unless, 
indeed, it is the writer's deliberate purpose to mislead. The edu- 
cated reader will guess the meaning sooner than the uneducated ; 
but neither educated nor uneducated should be burdened with the 
effort of guessing. 

Clearness, as we have said, may conveniently be subdivided into 
general clearness and minute clearness — minute clearness being 
expressed by such words as distinctness, exactness, precision. There 
is a marked line of separation between these subdivisions. Accu- 
racy in the general outlines is a different thing from accuracy in 
the details. In truth, the two are somewhat antagonistic. To 
dwell with minute precision on the details tends rather to confuse 
our impressions as to the general outlines. After our attention has 
been turned to minute distinctions, we find it difficult to grasp the 
mutual relations of the parts so distinguished when wc endeavour 
to conceive them as a whole. Again, minute distinctness is opposed 
to simplicity. The general outlines of things can be conveyed in 
familiar language ; but when we desire to be exact, we must have 
recourse to terms that aVe technical and unfamiliar. To say that 
the earth is "round" is a sufficiently clear description of the form 
of the earth in a general way — and the word is familiar to every- 
body ; but when we are more exact, and describe the earth as "a 
sphere flattened at the poles," we remove ourselves from the easy 
comprehension of many of our countrymen. 

We are now in a better position to discuss the critical and popu- 
lar use of the word perspicuity. It is evident, from Campbell's 
account of the faults against perspicuity, that he understands by 
the term a certain amount of clearness combined with simplicity. 
He includes in his list of offences not only confusion of thought, 
ambiguity — using the same word in different senses — and uncer- 
tain reference in pronouns and relatives, which are offences against 
clearness, but also technical terms and long sentences, which are 
offences against simplicity. This is also the popular use of the 
term. Such writers as Addison and ^lacaulay are said to be per- 

R 



18 INTUODUCTION. 

spicuous, because tliey are at once simple or easily understood, and 
free from obvious confusion. Their ideas are expressed in popular 
language, and sufficiently discriminated for ]>0}iuiar ai)prehension. 

Popularly, therefore, as well as in some rhetorical treatises, per- 
spicuity stands for a clear, unamliiguous, unconfused structure of 
simple language. But why should the term be confined to a clear 
structure of simple language ? We can easily see how it came to 
be so confined. A general reader does not receive clear impres- 
sions from a work couched in abstruse language, however perspic- 
uous may be the arrangement. The effort of realising the words 
is too much, and he lets them slip through his mind vaguely. 
For him an abstruse style cannot be perspicuous — simplicity is 
indispensable to perspicuity. But while we see how the word 
came to be so confined, we cannot see why it should be kept so 
confined. Johnson's arrangement is clearer and more free from 
ambiguity than Addison's or Tillotson's. Why should he not be 
called a perspicuous writer ? 

But some of our readers will say that Johnson is called a per- 
spicuous writer. This is true, but he is not so by Campbell's defi- 
nition, for he uses technical terms and long sentences ; nor is he 
so by the verdict of those that are loosely called general readers. 
He is called perspicuous because his words are apt to his meaning, 
and because the general structure of his discourses is clear. His 
language is not simple ; he is not perspicuous if simplicity be con- 
sidered a part of perspicuity. 

Here, therefore, seems to arise a clash between the general 
reader and the reader more familiar with abstract and learned 
phraseology. But the disagreement is more ap[iarent than reaL 
The general reader applies the term perspicuous to a clear choice 
and construction of simple language, of language familiar to him; 
the more learned reader applies the term to a clear choice and 
structure of language, abstruse perhaps to the generality, but still 
familiar to him. In point of fact, the two classes of readers use 
the word perspicuous with the same meaning. Both have in view, 
nut the familiarity of the language or the structure, but the clear- 
ness of it, its freedom from ambiguity and confusion. The intel- 
lectual qualities of such writers as Tillotson, Locke, Addison, 
Macaulay, are not fully distinguished by the single word perspic- 
uous — the style of such writers is ])erspicuous and simple. John- 
son and De Quincey are also perspicuous in their choice of words, 
and in their general structure ; but their diction, as a whole, is 
abstruse. 

We said a little ago that clearness might be subdivided into 
general clearness and minute clearness. At that time we men- 
tioned no single word for general clearness. In our consideration 
of the word perspicuity, we have seen that, when hunted down to 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 19 

its real signification, it proves to be the very word required. Per- 
spicuity, or lucidity, will thus stand for general clearness, unam- 
biguous, unconfused structure — what may loosely be called general 
accuracy of outline. For minute accuracy, careful discrimination 
of terms — demanding from the reader an effort to make sure that 
his ideas are not vague, but rigidly defined — we have the terms 
precision, exactness, and distinctness. 

A distinct, exact writer may be perspicuous ; but, as we have 
said, he runs a risk of not being so. When a writer is scrupulously 
anxious that his readers understand every detail exactly as he con- 
ceives it, there is a danger that he put too severe a strain upon 
them, and confuse their comprehension of the general aspect of his 
theme. De Quincey is an example of a writer at once exact and 
perspicuous ; and the secret is, that he is aware of his danger, and 
frequently presses upon his reader a general view of what he is 
doing. 

Precision and simplicity are in a measure antagonistic. When 
Socrates began to cross-examine the people of Athens, he found 
that they could not define the meaning of words that they were 
using every day. They used language in a loose way for purposes 
of social intercourse, and did not trouble themselves to be rigidly 
exact. The case is not much altered among us. A very exact 
writer cannot but be abstruse to the generality. 

EMOTIONAL QUALITIES OF STYLE— STRENGTH, 
PATHOS, THE LUDICROUS. 

The emotional qualities of style are not so difficult to distinguish 
as the intellectual qualities. Had Campbell not been needlessly 
anxious to isolate the style from the subject-matter, he would 
never have thought of huddling together all the emotional quali- 
ties under the name of vivacity.^ There are three broadly dis- 
tinguished emotional qualities — strength, pathos, and the ludi- 
crous ; and each of these is a general name for distinct varieties. 

Under the general name of Strength are embraced such varieties 
;is animation, vivacity, liveliness, rajiidity, brilliancy; nerve, 
vigour, force, energy, fervour ; dignity, stateliness, splendour, 
grandeur, magniiicence, loftiness, sublimity. 

Between the extremes in the list — animation and sublimity — 
there is a wide difference ; yet sublimity is more api>ropriately 
classed with animation than with any mode of pathos. So with 
rapidity and dignity. The contrast between strength and pathos 

^ Lonsjinns's celebrated treatise nepl v^povi, mistranslated " On tlie SuMinie" 
throus'i llie Latin I)e ^(blimitule, falls into tlie same excess of alistraction. 
Hi/psds, according to De Quiiicey, means everything tending to elevate coiapo* 
sitiou above commonpUce. 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

is as the contrast between motion and rest. The effect of a calm, 
sustained motion is nearer to the effect of absolute repose than it 
is to the effect of a restless, rapid, abrupt motion ; yet the calm, 
sustained motion is considered as a state of motion, and not as a 
state of rest. In like manner, an overpowering sense of sublimity 
approaches neaier to a sense of depression and melancholy than 
it does to animation or vivacity ; yet it is essentially a mode of 
strength, and not a mode of pathos. 

In the above list I have attempted some kind of subordinate 
division, throwing together the terms that seem more nearly syn- 
onymous. It would not be possible to define them exactly without 
incurring the charge of making one's own feelings the standard for 
all men. The terms are used with considerable latitude, partly 
because few people take the trouble to weigh their words, but 
partly also because different men have different ideals of animation, 
different ideals of energy, different ideals of sublimity. All can 
understand, upon due reflection, the common bond between these 
qualities — their common difference from the qualities comprehended 
under pathos ; but no amount of explanation can give two men of 
different character the same ideas of animation, energy, dignity, or 
sublimity. The utmost that explanation can do is to disabuse 
their minds of the idea that the one is wrong and the other right, 
and to persuade them that they are simply at variance. At the 
same time, the apidication of the terms is not absolutely chaotic. 
Take the universal suffrage, and you find a considerable body of 
substantial agreement between the loose borders. 

One great cause of the licentious abuse of these terms is the 
desire of admirers to credit their favourites with every excellence 
of style. Could we subtract all the abuses committed under this 
impulse, we should find the popular applications of terms very 
much at one. All agree in describing Macaulay as animated, 
rapid, and brilliant. There is not so much unanimity in accredit- 
ing him with dignity — at least with dignity of the highest de- 
gree ; and he is seldom credited with sublimity. Eeaders would 
probably be no less unanimous in calling Jeremy Taylor fervid, 
Dryden energetic, Temple dignified, Defoe nervous, Johnson vigor- 
ous, Burke splendid, and De Qnincey's " prose fantasies " sublime. 

Perhaps none of the above words are so shifting in their appli- 
cation as the word sublimity. In an account of De Quincey's 
character I have tried to distinguish two opposite modes of sub- 
limity. No critical term is more in need of definition. De Quin- 
cey denies it of Homer, and ascribes it in the highest degree to 
Milton, seeming to understand by it the exhibiting of vast power 
to adoring contemplation. 

Pathos is contrasted with the sentiment of power, and is said to 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 21 

be "allied to inaction, repose, and the passive side of our nature." 
According to this definition, whatever excites or agitates is not 
pathetic. 

This distinction, like every attempt at analysis of mental states, 
is open to endless dispute. It will be almost unanimously allowed 
as regards tender feelings awakened by the representation of 
" objects of special affection, displays of active goodness, humane 
sentiments, and gentle pleasures." But it may stagger many as 
applied to the representations of pain and misery. Are these not 
agitating 1 and are they not justly called pathetic 1 

To answer all conceivable difficulties in the way of understand- 
ing the above definition of pathos would be hopeless within our 
present limits. It may remove some difficulties to remind the 
reader that we have here to do not with tender feeling as awak- 
ened by actual objects, but with tender feeling as awakened by 
verbal representations. Pathos, as here discussed, is the quality 
of a style that awakens tender feelings — not another name for 
tender feeling as it arises in actual life. I do not mean that the 
feelings arising from these two sources differ otherwise than in 
degree ; I mean only that the reality is usually more agitating 
than the verbal representation. The rejjort of a railway accident 
may be read with a certain luxurious horror by a delicate person, 
whom the actual sight would throw into fits. 

But still the question returns, Are not verbal representations 
of pain and misery often agitating 1 The answer to this question 
is, that not every rejjresentation of pain and misery is pathetic. 

To speak technically, there are two different uses of painful 
scenes in composition — the description of misery is adapted to 
two distinct ends. These may be defined, with sufficient accu- 
racy, as the persuasive end and the poetic end. When a writer 
or a speaker wishes, by a painful description or a painful story, 
to persuade to a course of action, he dwells upon the particulars 
that agitate and excite. A pleader, wishing to excite pity for 
his client, so as to ])rocure acquittal, dwells upon the harrowing 
side of the case — the destitution of the man's family, and such- 
like. He does not cater for the pleasure of the jurors, but does 
his best to make them uncomfortable. So the jireacher of a 
charity sermon, if he wishes to draw contributions from his 
audience, must not throw a sentimental halo over the miseries 
of the poor, but must drag into prominence hunger, dirt, and 
nakedness, in their most repulsive aspects, horrifying his hearers 
with ]nctures that haunt them until they have done tlieir utmost 
to relieve the sufferers. Very different is the end of the poet. 
His object is to throw his reader into a pleasing melancholy. He 
withholds from his picture of distress all disgusting and exciting 
circumstances, reconciles us to the pain by dwelling upon its 



22 INTEODUCTION. 

alleviations, represents misery as the inevitable lot of man, ex- 
hibits the authors of misery as visited witli condign punishment, 
expresses impassioned sympathy with the unfortunate victims. 
By some artifice or other — I have mentioned only a few for illus- 
tration — he contrives to make us acquiesce in the existence of the 
misery represented. He has failed in his end if he leaves us dis- 
satisfied and uncomfortable, because the misery was not relieved 
or cannot be relieved now. If we are not reconciled to the ex- 
istence of the misery, disposed simply to mourn over it and be 
content, the composition is not pathetic, but painful. For this 
luxurious treatment of painful things the poet is often heavily 
censured by the preacher. Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey' was 
reprobated by Piobert Hall ; and in our own day we are familiar 
with Carlyle's denunciation of " whining, puling, sickly senti- 
mentality." • 

To this distinction between the painful end of persuasion and 
the pathetic end of poetry, we may add a little by way of antici- 
pating the more obvious objections. 

It will be said that a preacher's object is to persuade people to 
action, and yet that sermons are often called pathetic. This fact 
need not disturb our definition. For, i°, While it is one of a 
preacher's objects to persuade to action, it is not his only object : 
the pulpit has also a function of consolation — and consolation, the 
reconciling of people to their iniseries, is by our definition essen- 
tially pathetic. 2", Supposing a sermon admirably adapted to set 
beneficence in motion — supposing it to present a picture of most 
harrowing distress — the hearers cannot take measures for relief 
at once ; and meantime, if not so excited as to be thoroughly 
uncomfortable, they may indulge in pathetic dreams of the relief 
that they intend to give. 3°, The effect of a composition depends 
very much upon the recipient — a tale of woe that makes one man 
uncomfortable for days, may supply anotlier with a luxurious feast 
of mournful sentiment. It is chiefly this last consideration that 
makes the application of the term pathos shifting — that causes the 
dilliculty of drawing any "objective" line between jtathos and 
horror. Few persons skilled in analysing their feelings would 
object to the above definition of pathos, but there would be con- 
siderable difierence of opinion as to what is agitating or horrible 
and what is truly pathetic. 

Again, it may be said that a tragic poem is agitating, and yet 
that it is pathetic. To which we answer that in a tragedy, while 
isolated scenes are tempestuously agitating, the effect may yet be 
pathetic on the whole. Tragedy "purifies the mind by pity and 
terror ;" the atmosphere is shaken with tempests, only to subside at 
the end into a purer and more perfect calm. Painful incidents, 
thrilling transports of grief, keep alive our interest in the plot : 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 23 

fire do not see the pathetic side of these painful representationa 
till we look back upon them from the repose of the conclusion. 

I need not dwell on the terms for varieties of the Ludicrous. 
The only nicety is the distinction between wit and humour. 
Much has been written on this distinction. One can see, from 
the examples quoted, that critics are very much at one, though 
they generally fail in definition, owing to the vagueness of their 
psychological language. Proftssor Bain's theory is that hiimonr 
is simply the laughable degradation of an object without malice, 
in a genial, kindly, good-natured way ; and that int is " an in- 
genious and unexpected piny upon words." The two qualities 
are not opposed, not incompatible. A good deal of the confusion 
about them has arisen from viewing them as two contrasted and 
inconsistent qualities. Wit may be humorous, or it may be 
derisive, malicious. I have somewhere seen it laid down that 
humour " involves an element of the subjective." When we call 
a writer humorous, we have regard to the spirit of his ludicrous 
degradation ; we imply that he is good-natured — that he bears no 
malice. When we call a writer witty, we have regard simply to 
the cleverness of his expression ; he may be sarcastic, like Swift 
— or humorous, like Steele. The proper antithesis to humour is 
satire : wit is common to both. 

Such is the true definition of humour, but in the actual applica- 
tion there may be as nuich inconstancy as in the application of the 
term pathos, and from the same reason. What appears kindly and 
good-natured to one man, may not appear so to another. Addison 
is generally classed among the humourists ; yet only the other day 
his kindliness was described as an affectation put on to sharpen the 
sting of his ridicule. Johnson spoke of his "malevolent wit and 
humorous sarcasm " ; and the present writer believes that it would 
be difficult to find, among all Addison's papers, half-a-dozen in 
which the wit may not fairly be characterised as malicious. He 
b a humourist to us, but he could hardly have appeared a humour- 
ist to his victims. 

There is another cause of difference among critics as respects 
particular compositions. A reader may refuse to acknowledge a 
degradation, however comical. He may view an ol)ject too seri- 
ously to allow that it should be trilled with. A recent critic 
professes himself blind to the humour of De Quincey, and sees 
in his playful liberties with distinguished names nothing but 
frivolous impertinence. In all such cases, as De Quincey him- 
self says, "nut to sympathise is not to understand." 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

EliEGATfCIES OF STYLE - MELODY, HARMONY, 
TASTE. 

" In the harmony of periods," says Blair, " two things may be 
considered. First, agreeable sound, or modulation in general with- 
out any particular expression. Next, the sound so ordered as tc 
become expressive of the sense," 

Instead of expressing qualities so different by a single term, it 
is better to provide a term for each. In accordance with the 
acceptation of melody and harmony in the vocabulary of music, 
we may describe "agreeable sound or modulation in general" as 
Melody, and " the sound so ordered as to become expressive of the 
sense " as Harmony. If a single designation is wanted for the two 
qualities together, we may, agreeably to Campbell's list of quali- 
ties, call them tlie music of composition. 

Under Melody there are two things that we may consider. 
First, whether an author conforms to the general laws of melody, 
— the avoiding of harsh effects ; the alternation of long and short, 
emphatic and unemphatic syllables ; the alternation of conson- 
ants among themselves, and vowels among themselves; the avoid- 
ing of unpleasant alliterations ; the cadence at the close. Second, 
what is his prevailing rhythm, tune or strain, and how far this is 
varied. 

To examine how far an author observes the general rules of 
melody would be a good school exercise. It is not easy to give 
an idea of an author's favourite strain. The only means open to 
us is to produce characteristic specimens. We have as yet no 
scheme of "nonienclnture or notation for describing it technically. 

Some writers, i)erhaps the majority, can impart no characteristic 
swing to their language — either having no natural preference for a 
particular rhythm, or giving their whole attention to the expres- 
sion of the meaning, or being overruled by habitual combinations. 
Only such as have, first, a decided ear for effects of cadence, and, 
secondly, a copious choice of words, can attain to a melody that 
shall be either characteristic or effective. 

As regards Harmony. There is such a thing as harmony, or 
adaptation of sound to sense, even in prose. At the same time, 
change of strain or movement to suit change of theme is not so 
marked in prose as in poetiy, and for a very obvious reason. The 
writer of verse can suit himself to variations of feeling by choice 
of metre, but the wiiter of prose has no such fixed steps to help 
him to vary his pace. Besides, the prose writer's habits of con- 
struction are accommodated to his prevailing rhythm ; the phrases 
that most readily occur to him are in pace with this rhythm, — so 
that, along with a greater diflicnlty than the verse writer in chang- 
ing his pace, owing to the want of a standard metre, he has a 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 25 

farther difficulty that besets none but verse writers accustomed 
only to one metre. 

Accordingly, we find that prose writers liaving a characteristic 
rhythm, can vary it but slightly to harmonise with the subject- 
matter. 

The word taste is used in two different senses ; and when we 
meet with the word, and are disposed to challenge its application, 
we do well to make sure in which signification our author employs 
it. In its widest sense it is equivalent to artistic sensibility — as 
Blair defines it, " the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties 
of nature and of art." In its narrower sense it may be expressed 
as artistic judgment, being identical with what Blair and others 
define as " delicacy " and " correctness " of taste. By writers of 
the present day the word seems to be generally used in the nar- 
rower sense ; and in this sense it is used in the following work. 

As regards what artistic judgment is there may be wide differ- 
ences of opini(m. Many men, many tastes ; one man's liking may 
be another man's loathing. Still, when all has been said that can 
be said concerning differences of taste, it cannot be denied that 
there is a considerable body of agreement. To take the elements 
of style separately. There is a tolerably unanimous public opinion 
against interlarding English composition with foreign words or 
idioms, Latin, French, or German ; against needless coining of new 
words; and against setting up of unidiomatic combinations. No 
writer could make an excessive use of any artifice of construction 
— balanced sentences, short sentences, condensed sentences, abrupt 
and startling transitions — without incurring general censure. So 
as regards figures of speech : a style too ornate, too hyperbolical, 
too declamatory, is condemned as such by the critics with very 
considerable unanimity. Marked abuses of the elements of style 
are very generally recognised as abuses. To be sure, if a writer is 
otherwise fresh and vigorous, all read him ; and even fastidious 
critics wink at his eccentricities as an agreeable break in the 
general monotony of compositit)n ; but few venture to hold up hia 
eccentricities for general imitation. 

Concerning the emotional qualities of style we find much less 
agreement. There are always a few of wider literary knowledge 
and superior disceinment who groan inwardly, some of them out- 
wardly, at the judgment of the multitude in the matter of sulv 
limity, ]>athos, and humour. And these apart, writers and their 
admirers separate naturally into different schools. Taste "varies 
with the emotional constitution, the intellectual tendencies, and 
the education of each individual. A person of strong tender feel- 
ings is not easily offended by the iteration of jiathetic images ; the 
sense of the ludicrous and of humour is in many cases entirely 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

wanting ; and the strength of humane and moral sentiment may 
be such as to recoil from inflicting ludicrous degradation. A mind 
bent on the pursuit of truth views with distaste the exaggerations 
of the poetic art. P^ach person is by education attached more to 
one school or class of writers than to another." 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Five " kinds of composition " are set down in Bain's Rhetoric — • 
description, narration, exposition, persuasion, poetry.^ Each of 
these kinds has a special method, a special body of rules. The 
student who has mastered everything th;it lias been given under 
the " Elements " and the "Qualities" of style, has still something 
to learn. 

We have already remarked that the three divisions adopted in 
this work are distinguished not as separate component parts, but 
only as difierent aspects or different ways of ap[)roach. We have 
said that under either the " Elements of Style," the " Qualities of 
Style," or the " Kinds of Comjiosition," a complete survey might 
be taken of all the arts of style. When we come to consider the 
kinds of composition, we see that this remark needs a farther 
limitation. The kinds of composition may be subdivided, and 
under each of the subdivisions might be included a complete survey 
of the arts of style. Every precept of style laid down under the 
"Elements" and the "Qualities" might be repeated under De- 
scription, Narration, and Exposition. Whoever wishes to describe 
well, narrate well, and expound well, would be all the better for 
knowing every good advice that can be given in the departments 
prior in the order of our sketch. Persuasion, again, embraces 
everything prior to it. There is no precept of style that may not 
be useful to the orator or the persuasive writer. " Hhetoric " is 
another name for the whole art of composition. 

DESCHIPTIOj^, WAE,IlATI02Sr, EXPOSITION. 

These three kinds of composition may be roughly distinguished 
as follows : Description embraces all the means of representing 
in words particular " objects of consciousness," whether external 
things or states of mind ; narration, all the means of representing 
particular sequences of events ; exposition, all the means of repre- 
senting general propositions. These may be taken as rough defi- 
nitions of them in their elemental purity ; in actual composition 
they are almost always mixed. 

For the simplest forms of description, narration, and exposition, 
special rules would be of no practical use — would be affected and 
superfluous. It is only in the more complicated and difficult forma 

1 The design of the present work excludes Poetry, both with and without the 

tccompauiuieiit of metre. 



KINDS OF COMrOSITIOX. . 27 

that precepts become of service, and then they may be said to be 
indispensable. 

The main difficulty in description arises "when we have to 
describe a varied scene — the array of a battle, a town, a prospect, 
the exterior or interior of a building, a i)iece of machinery, the 
geograjJiy of a country, the structure of a plant or an animal." 
It is to this difficulty that the special rules of description apply. 
Burke and JMacauLiy are often said to possess great descriptive 
power. But, as we shall see, this can mean only that they present 
with vividness the individual particulars or striking aspects of a 
scene. Neither of them possesses great descriptive method. Carlyle 
may be said to have raised the standard of descriptive method ; 
Alison also, and later Mr Kiuglake, are very studied in their 
descriptions. 

The principles of description, as stated in Bain's Rhetoric, are 
perha[>s the best defined and the least liable to exception of all 
precepts relating to composition. No person can describe a com- 
plicated scene well without consciously or uiiconsciousl_y satisfying 
these conditions ; and a person with a moderate command of lan- 
guage, by adhering to these conditions, wdl surpass — at least as 
regards the first essential of drawing a clear picture — the undisci- 
plined efforts of very high genius. 

No such exactness of plan is attainable for the narration of 
complicated events. Still, it is jjossible to point out to the his- 
torian his chief liabilities to confusion, and put him so far upon 
his guard. 

We defined the fundamental idea of narration as being the repre- 
sentation of particular sequences of events. But History in its 
actual development is a much more complex afi'air. De Quincey 
recognises three modes of history : Narrative (a record of ])ublic 
transactions) ; Scenical (a study of picturesque effects) ; and Philo- 
sophical (a reasoned explanation of events). These are real dis- 
tinctions, and we are not sure that they might not be multiplied. 
Not that extant histories may be divided into these three classes 
— such a work as Macaulay's ' History of England ' attempts to 
combine the three modes — but these distinctions point to three 
different functions of History. The historian may simply record 
public transactions without attempting to explain them or draw 
lessons from them, and without any effort to describe splendid 
spectacles or interesting incidents. He may give his i)rincipal care 
to making the record of events instructive, may have a studious 
eye to the lessons of political and social wisdom, or he may give 
his principal care to making the record of events scenically or 
dramatically interesting. Now, without saying that these three 
functions should be kept distinct — that a history shoull be either 
plainly narrative, or philosophical, or scenical, and should not 



28 INTRODUCTION. 

aspire to be all three at once — there is an advantage in considering 
a history under these three aspects separately. We observe first 
by what arts the historian makes his narrative simple and per- 
spicuous — vi^hether he follows the order of events, where and with 
what justification he departs from that order, what provision he 
makes for keeping distinct in our minds the several concurring 
streams of events in complicated transactions, what skill he shows 
in the construction of summaries, and other minor points. His 
skill in explaining events by general principles, and in deducing 
general lessons, forms a separate consideration. And still another 
consideration is hisscenical and dramatic skill; his word-painting, 
plot-arrangement, and other points of artistic treatment. 

Apart from the objects of critical remark thus grouped together 
may be placed, as a thing for special consideration, the particular 
form of historical chapter or book that undertakes to delineate the 
whole social state of a people at some one epoch. The most cele- 
brated example of this is the third chapter of Macaulay's History. 

For the statement of simple generalities, presenting no difficulty 
to the apjtrehension of the reader, little direction can be given. 
The rules of exposition apply only to the more abstruse gener- 
alities. The four leading arts of statement and illustration are 
iteration, obverse iteration, exempliKcation, and comparison. The 
popular expositor must. also study the arts of imparting interest to 
dry subjects, and must learn to appreciate the difficulties of the 
tyro, and to take every advantage of the previous knowledge of his 
readers. 

The arts of Persuasion, rhetoric proper, open up a still wider 
field. We have said that all the arts of style are of service to the 
orator. There are times, perhaps, when the speaker may choose to 
set the precepts of clear expression on one side. Instead of trying 
to express himself clearly, he may seek to mislead and cheat his 
audience with studied ambiguity ; but he will do this all the 
better if he is able, upon occasion, to express himself clearly and 
attractively. 

The principal things to attend to in criticising oratory are the 
orator's knowledge and power of adapting himself to the persons 
addressed, his veri>al ingenuity as shown in liajipy turns of expres- 
sion, his argumentative power, and his skill in playing upon special 
erAotions. 

In the examination of the leading authors, we follow the order 
of this introductory sketch. We do not take up, in the case of 
every author, every point here menti(med ; we remark only upon 
the prominent features in each individual case ; but we take up 
the various points in the order of our preliminary analysis. 



PART L 



DE QUINCEY. MACAULAT. 
CARLYLK 



CHAPTER L 



THOMAS DE QUINCET, 

1785— 1859. 

Among the most eminent prose writers of this century is Thomas 
de Quincey, best known as Tlte Englitik Opuun-Eater. 

The family of De Quincey, as we learn from this its most famous 
modern representative, was originally Norwegian, played a distin- 
guished part in the Norman Conquest, and flourished through nine 
or ten generations as one of the houses of nobility, until its head, 
the Earl of Winchester, was attainted for treason. For more than 
a century before the birth of the " Opium-Eater," none of his name 
had borne a title of high rank. His father was an opulent mer- 
chant in Manchester, who died young, leaving his widow a fortune 
of ^1600 a-3'ear. 

We know the particulars of the earlier part of De Quincey's life 
from his ' Confessions of an Opiuni-Eater,' and his 'Autobiographic 
Sketches.' The fifth son of a family of eight, he was born on the 
15th of August 1785, at Greenhay, then an isolated house about a 
mile from Manchester. He has recorded his earliest recollections ; 
and he was so precocious, that these date from the middle of his 
second year. His autobiography contains few incidents that de- 
part strikingly from the ordinary course of the world. In his own 
record, things that are insignificant as objects of general interest 
assume the proportions that all human beings must assign to the 
events of their own life. 

His first great affliction was the death of a favourite sister when 
he was about six years old. Were we to measure him by the 
standard of ordinary children, we should refuse to believe what he 
tells us of the profound gloom thrown over him by this bereave- 
ment — " the night that for him gathered upon that event ran after 



32 THOMAS DE QUI^■CEY. 

his steps far into life." "Well it was for me at this period," lie 
says, " if well it were for me to live at all, tliat fmm any continued 
contemplation of my misery I was forced to wean myself, and sud. 
denly to assume the harness of life." 

From these " sickly reveries " he was suddenly withdrawn, and 
" introduced to the world of strife." A " horrid pugilistic brother," 
five or six years older than himself, whose "genius for mischief 
amounted to inspiration," returned home from a public school. 
The character of this brother is drawn in the Sketches with ex- 
quisite humour and fondness. He was a boy of amazing spirits 
and volubility. He maintained a constant war with the boys of a 
neighbouring factory, and compelled little Thomas to bear a part. 
He ke[)t the nursery in a whirl of excitement and wonder with war 
bulletins, ghost stories, tragic theatricals, and burlesque lectures 
"on all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of 
our English Church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic — 
both black and white — thaumaturgy, and necromancy." 

After two years of this excitement, William left Greenhay, and 
Thomas, then in his eighth year, relapsed into his quiet life, and 
steadily pursued his studies under one of his guardians, finding in 
that guardian's family other objects for his i»recocioiis sympathy 
and meditation. When he was eleven years old his mother removed 
to Bath, and placed him at the grammar-school there. He had 
made such progress under his guardian's tutorship that at Bath his 
Latin verses were ])araded by the head-master as an incitement to 
the older boys. This distinction led to his removal from tlie school. 
His austere mother was so shocked at the compliments he was 
receiving, that, after two years, she sent him to a private school in 
Wiltshire, "of which," he says, "the chief recommendation lay in 
the religious character of the master." At Winkfield he remained 
but a year. Then came a pleasant interlude in his school life. He 
spent the summer travelling in Ireland with Lord Westport, a young 
friend of his own age, and on his return stayed for three months at 
Laxt(m, the seat of Lord Carbery, where he studied Greek and 
talked theology with the beautiful Lady Carbery. But his pleasures 
were again interrupted by the higher powers. Plis guardians de- 
cided that he should go for three years to Manchester grammar- 
school before proceeding to Oxford. Some boys would have hailed 
the change with pleasure, but young De Quiiicey, though then but 
fifteen and a few months more, was premature in the expansion of 
his mind, and had begun to think boyish society intolerable. He 
went to Manchester in 1800, but he could not bring himself to be 
content with his situation. In the course of two years his health 
gave way, and no longer able to endure the restraint, he took his 
departure one day without warning. His wanderings did not last 
long. He walked straight to Chester; and, while hanging about 



LIFE. 33 

his mother's house trying to get nn interview with liis sister, was 
caught by an easy stratagem. He was not, however, sent back to 
scliool, but remained at his mother's hnuse till his guardians should 
decide what was to be done with him. 

Soon followed the great adventure of his life, the most interest- 
ing part of his Confessions. Obtaining some money from his 
mother for a pedestrian tour in Wales, he tired of the mountain 
solitudes, and shaped his course to London, in hopes of being able 
to borrow two hundred pounds on his expectations. Here he 
went through hard experiences. His errand brought him under 
the vexatious extoitions and delays of a money-hnder. He was 
reduced to the brink of starvation. On one occasion, indeed, he 
might have jierished but for the kindness of a companion in mis- 
fortune, thp poor outcast Anne, whom in happier days he vainly 
sought to trace. Fortunately he was discovered and taken home 
again. He remained at home about a year ; but being taunted 
by his uncle with wasting his time, he undertook to go to Oxford 
ujion ;^ioo of an annual allowance, and proceeded thitlier in the 
October of 1S03. 

The 'Autobiographic Sketches,' as republished, terminate with 
his sudden resolution to go to Oxford. In their original form, as 
contributions to ' Tait's Magazine,' three more papers undertake 
to describe his life at Oxford, but the.--e consist mostly of rambling 
digressions on the idea of an English University, on the Greek 
orators, on Paley, and suchlike, and contain very little personal 
narrative. This much we may glean, that he lived a hermit kind 
of life, and did not conform in the least to the studies of the place. 
He "sequestered himself" so com[iletely that (to quote his own 
expression), "for the first two years of my residence in Oxford, I 
compute that I did not utter one hundred words." He had but 
one conversation with his tutor. " It consisted of three sentences, 
two of which fell to his share, one to mine." In all senses he 
^^ as justified in exclaiming, " Oxford, ancient mother ! hoary with 
ancestral honours, time-honoured, and, haply it may be, time-shat- 
tered power, I owe thee nothing ! Of thy vast riches I took not a 
shilling, though living among multitudes who owed to thee their 
daily bread." In the matter of study, he was a law to himself. 
He told his tutor in that notable conversation that he was reading 
Paley; but in point of fact he had been "reading and studying 
very closely the ' Parmenides.' " As a schoolboy he had attained 
to an unusual mastery over the Greek language, "moving through 
all the obstacles and resistances of a Greek book with the same 
celerity and ease as through those of the French and Latin" — 
and he read Greek daily ; " but nny slight vanity which he might 
connect with a power so rarely attained, and which, under ordinary 
circumstances, so readily transmutes itself into a dispioportionato 

c 



34 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

admiration of the author, in him was ahsolidely mvallowed up in the 
tremendous hold taken of his entire sensibilities at this time by our 
oivii literatnre.^' 

In his ' Recollections of Coleridge ' he says, " From 1803 to 1808 
I was a stuilent at Oxford." This probably means that for those 
five years he remained formally on the books of Worcester College, 
How much of this time he spent in actual residence is not recorded, 
and in all likelihood cannot be ascertained. When we consider his 
self-determined habits of study, we see that it matters compara- 
tively little to know where he lived. There is a tradition that he 
once submitted to the written i)art of the Final Examination, but 
abruptly left Oxford without offering himself for the oral part, 

111 the intervals of his residence at Oxford, he began to make 
occasional visits to London, and to get introductions to literary 
siiciety. He had always been es[)eciaily anxious to see Coleridge 
and Wordsworth. When he ran away from school, he would have 
gone to the Lake district, had he not scru|iled to present himself 
in the character of a fugitive schoolboy. About Christmas 1804-5 
he had gone to London with an introduction to Charles Lamb, his 
final object being to procure through Lamb an introduction to 
(Coleridge. His wishes were not gratified till later than this. He 
first saw Coleridge at Bristol in the autumn of 1S07, and Words- 
worth later in the same year, at the poet's cottage in the Vale of 
Grasmere. 

In the winter of 180S-9 he took up his residence at the Lakes. 
Wordsworth had quitted his cottage in Grasmere for the larger 
house of Allan F>unk, and De Quiucey succeeded this illustrious 
tenant. He retained this cottage for seven-and-twenty years, and 
up to 1829 it was his principal place of residence. "From this 
era," he says, "through a period of about twenty years in .succes- 
sion, I may describe my domicile as being amongst the lakes and 
mounbiins of Westmoreland. It is true, I often made excursions 
to London, P»ath, and its neighbourhood, or northwards to Edin- 
burgh ; and perhaps, on an average, passed one-fourth part of each 
year at a distance from this district ; but here only it was that 
henceforwards I had a house and small establishment." A good 
many interesting particulars about the society of the Lnkes, and 
his way of passing his time, are given in some jjapers that have 
not been republished (' Tait's Magazine,' 1840). 

From the time of his settling at the Lakes, a habit grew u]ion 
him which powerfully influenced his life. Some four years after 
he took up his residence at Grasmere, he became a confirmed and 
daily opium-eater. The rise and ])rogress of this habit, the pleas- 
ures and the pains of the "pernicious drug," and the miseries of 
his struggle to leave it off, are related in his Opium Con fes.") ions. 
He had first tasted opium in 1804, as a cure for toothache. From 



LIFE, 35 

that date np to 1812 he took opiuin as an occasional induli^enoe, 
"fixing beforehand how often, ^vithin a given time, find when, he 
■would ciiminit a deliauch of opium." It was not till 1813 that 
oi)iuni hecauie with him an article of daily diet ; in that year he 
multiplied the laudanum drams to allay "an appalling irritation of 
the stomach." The large doses once begun, he could not break oflf. 
He went on from one degree of indulgence to anotiier, till in 1816 
he was taking as much as 8000 drops of laudanum per day. Prob- 
alily in view of his approaching marriage, he sui'ceedeil in reducing 
his allowance to 1000 drops. He married towards the close of 
1816. Up to the midlle of 1817 he "judges himself to have been 
a happy man ;" and he draws a beautiful picture of the interior of 
his cottage in a stormy winter night, with "warm heaith-rugs, tea, 
a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample dra])eries 
on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are rauing audibly without." 
Again he seems to have lapsed into over-indulgence — to have suc- 
cumbed to the " Circean s})ells " of opium. The next four years 
he spent in a kind of intellectual torpor, utterly incapable of 
sustained exertion. " But for mi.sery and suffering," he says, " I 
might indeed be said to have existed in a dormant state. I sel- 
dom could prevail on myself to write a letter. An answer of a few 
Words to any that I received was the utmost that I could accom- 
plish ; and often that not until the letter had lain weeks, or even 
months, on my writing-table." At length in 182 1, with the in- 
creasing expenses of his household, his affairs became embarrassed, 
and he was called upon l)y the strongest inducements to shake off 
this dead weight upon his energies. He succeeded. Unable wholly 
to renounce the use of opium, he yet reduced the amount so far as 
to be capable of literary exertion.^ 

His first production was the 'Confessions of an English Opium- 
Eater.' This a])|)eared in the 'London Magazine' in the autumn 
of 1 82 1, and was reprinted in a separate form in the following 
year. 

From 1 82 1 to 1825, though he still spent the greater part of his 
time at Grasmere, lie was often in London, his lodgings being in 
York Street, Covent Garden. During tiiat time he was a frequent 
contributor to the ' London Magazine.' He speaks of his " daily 
task of writing and producing something for the journals ;" calls 

1 Tlie Opium Confessions, as they stand in tlie final eriition, convey the im- 
pression, though not in sjiecitic Monls, tliat lie hadwliolly renonnceii the use of 
opium, and he is usually accused of having jiretended to a self-coMini.iiici that he 
never al)solutely ae(iuired. Had tlie apjiendix to tlie first edition of the Confes- 
sions been rejirmted, he might have liet-n spared this accusa'iou. He there ex- 
plains why, in the narrative as originally written in tlie ' London Magazine,' he 
wished to convey the impression that he hail wholly renounced the use ol opium ; 
and says that in sufl'ering his readers to think of him as a reformed opiuiu-euter, 
he left no iiupressiou but what he shared hin:self. 



36 TTIO:\IAS DE QUIKCEY. 

liiinself "one of the corps litter air e ;''' and says that the follnw. 
ing wiiters were in 1821-2-3 "amongst his coUahorateiirs^^ in the 
'London ]\Iaij;azine ' — Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, Allan Cimningliam, 
Hood, Hamilton, Reynolds, Carey. In his ' Noctes AmbrosianiE,' 
Christopher North says that the magazine failed becanse De Quin* 
cey's papers were glaringly superior to the other contributions — a 
whimsical gibe at the other contributors. A performance of his in 
the autumn of 1824 maybe mentioned as showing how thoroughly 
he had identified himself with the literary brotherhood. It was, as 
be says, " tlie most conii)lete literary lioax that ever can liave lieen 
perpetrated." A German bookseller had published a novel in Ger- 
man' under the title of ' Walladmoor,' professing that it was a trans- 
lation from Sir Walter Scott. De Quincey reviewed the pseudo- 
translation hurriedly, and spoke of it in rather high terms, chance 
having directed him to the only tolerable passages in the work. 
Thereupon a London firm conceived the idea of translating it, and 
employed De Quincey as translator. When he came to go through 
the Work in detail, he found it, as he says, "such 'almighty' non- 
sense (to s})eak trans'it/.antice)" that translating it was out of the 
question ; and accordingly he rewrote the greater part of it. All 
the same, his com[)osition was given to the English worll as a 
translation from the German. His dedication of the performance 
to the German forger is a very fine piece of humour. His industry 
in London does not seem to have been sufficiently rewarded to 
relieve him from his embarrassments. In a letter to Professor 
Wilson, dated from London, 1825, he expresses himself as being 
in dread of apprehension for delit. 

After 1825 his literary activity was directed almost entirely to 
Edinburgh. He was probably drawn there by his friendship with 
Wilson. In 1826 he began, in ' Blackwood's Magazine,' a series of 
papers under the title of " Gallery of German Prose Classics ;" but 
opium-eaters, as he said, " though good fellows upcm the whole, 
never finish anytliing " — and the Gallery never received more than 
two celebrities, Lessing and Kant, the series ending with the third 
instalment. From 1825 to 1849 he wrote a great deal for 'Black- 
wood,' contributing altogether about fifty papers that have been 
re[)rinted, three or four sometimes U[)on one subject. Among the 
most famous of these 'Blackwood' papers were — "Murder con- 
sidered as one of the Fine Arts" (1827), "Toilette of a Hebrew 
Lady" (1828), " Dr Parr and his Contem])oraries, or Whiggism in 
its Relations to Literature" (1831), "The Caesars" (1832-3-4), 
"The Essenes" (1840), "On Style" (1840-1), "Homer and the 
Homeridie " (1841), " Coleridge and Opium-Eating" (1845), " Sus- 
l)iria de Profundis" (1845), "The Mail-Coach," and "The Vision 
of Sudden Death" (1849). 

In 1834 he formed another very fertile literary connection, 



LIFE. 37 

becoming a contributor to ' Tail's ^Nfagazine.' This connection is 
better known than his earlier and longer-continued connection with 
Blackwood, because his papers were not anonjanous, but bore either 
his own name or the well-known ulias^ " The English Opiuni-Eater." 
He contributed very regularly up to 1841, and again in 1845 and 
1846. He sent in altogether nearly fifty separate j)apers, of which 
about two-thirds have been reprinteil. The most famous w^ere his 
"Sketches of Life and ]\Jaiiners, from the Autobiograjihy of an 
English Opinm-Eater," contributed at intervals up to 1841. For 
some unexplained reason, not more than one-half of these have 
been reprinted. About thirty of his contributions to ' Tait ' were 
personal reminiscences. These are re])resented in his collected 
works by two volumes — 'Autobiographic Sketches' (vol. xiv.) 
and 'EecoUections of the Lakes' (voL ii.) Ai)art from these, his 
best-known papers in 'Tait' were "A Tory's Account of Toryism, 
Wliiggism, and Radicalism" (1835-36). 

Little seems to be known about his place of residence from 1830 
to 1843. Up to 1S29 he lived chieHyat Grasmere. He s})ent the 
year 1830 with Professor Wilson in Edinburgh. In 1835 he gave 
up his cottage at Grasmere. In 1843 he settle.d with his family at 
Lasswade, a small village near Edinburgh. It is probably to this 
interval that we must refer Mr John Hill Burton's somewhat over- 
done sketch of his habits and jiersonal appearance in the 'Book- 
Hunter,' where De Quincey appears as "Thomas Papaverius," a 
"mighty book-hunter." 

During 1842-3-4 he sent nothing to 'Tait,' and very little to 
'Blackwood'; and in 1844 apjieared the only work of his that 
first saw the light as an independent book — ' The Logic of Political 
Economy.' It is not a complete ex]iosition of political economy, 
but, as the title imports, of certain first principles — the doctrines 
of value, market-value, wages, rent, and profits. 

As in the case of Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, his scattered 
contributions to periodical literature were first rejmblished in 
-America. The collection was begun by the firm of Ticknor, Reed, 
& Fields, Boston, in 1852, without the author's knowledge; but 
the publishers generously made him a sharer in the profits of the 
publication, and he ultimately gave his assistance to the work of 
collecting the scattered ])apers. The first English edition, "in 
fourteen volumes crown 8vo, was ])ubli.shed by Messrs Hogg of 
Edinburgh, during the eight years 1853-60 ; and all the papers it 
contained, with the exception of a few in the last volume, enjoyed 
the author's revision and correction." 

His last productions were some papers on China, contributed to 
• ^Jtan ' (a continuation of ' Hogg's Instructor') in 1856-57. They 
are not included in his collected works, but are republished sepa- 
rately. 



38 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

He died at Edinburgli, December 8, 1859, in his seventy-fifth 

year. 

We have several descriptions of De Qnincey's personal appear- 
ance. He was a slender little man, with small, clearly chiselled 
features, a large head, and a remarkably high, square forehead. 
" In addition," says Professor Masson, " to the general impression 
of his diniinutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the pecu- 
liar beauty of his head and forehead, rising disproportionately high 
over his small, wrinkly visage, and gentle, deep-set eyes." There 
was a peculiarly high and regular arch in the wrinkles of his brow, 
which was also slightly contracted. The lines of his countenance 
fell naturally into an expression of mild suffering, of endurance 
sweetened by benevolence, or, according to the fancy of the inter- 
preter, of gentle, melancholy sweetness. All that met him seem 
to have been struck with the measured, silvery, yet somewhat 
hollow and unearthly, tones of his voice, the more impressive that 
the flow of his talk was unhesitating and unbroken. 

" Although a man considerably under height and slender of 
form, he was capable of undergoing great fatigue, and took con- 
stant exercise." Plis having been the travelling companion of 
Christopher North about the English lakes is a sufficient certificate. 
The weak point in his bodily system, as he frequently tells us, was 
his stomach. This weakness he often pleads as the justification of 
his opium-eating. Opium was " the sole remedy potent enough to 
control his distress and irritability." He sometimes humorously 
exaggerates his infirmity. " A more worthless body than his own, 
the author is free to confess, cannot be. It is his pride to believe 
that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system, 
that hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two 
days under the ordinary storms and wear and tear of life ; and, 
indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of human 
bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to bequeath 
his wretched structure to any respectable dog." 

As often happens,^ the impoverishment of certain bodily organs 
was accompanied, if not caused, by an enormous and dispropor- 
tionate activity of intellect. It may be doubted whether we have 
ever seen in this quarter of the globe a man so com[)letely absorbed 
in mental 0|)erations, and so far removed from our ordinary way 
of looking at the world. He resembled the contemplative sages of 
India more than the intellectual men of rough, practical England. 

1 " In general," says our antlior, " a man has reason to think himself well off 
in the great lottery of this lite if he draws tlie prize of a healthy stomach with- 
out a mind, or the prize of a tine intellect with a crazy stomach ; but tliat any 
man should draw both is truly astonishing, and, I suppose, happens only ouc« 
in a century." 



CHARACTER. 39 

Of no man can it he absolutely true that he does nothing but ob- 
serve, read, meditate, imagine, and communicate the results ; but 
this may be affirmed of De Qiiincey with a nearer aijproach to truth 
than it can be affirmed of any other great name in our literature. 

In reading his works, one of the first things that strike us is the 
extreme multifariousness of his knowledge. When we compare 
him even with writers of a high order, we cannot help being 
astonished at the force of a memory that could hold so much in 
readiness for immediate use. He was noted for conversational 
powers ; and, as he himself explains, one of his peculiar advantages 
for conversation was "a prodigious memory" and "an inexhaust- 
ible fertility of topics." 

In his writings this retentive capacity often makes us pause and 
wonder. For some of his most curious freaks of scholarship, in- 
deed, his " Toilette of a Hebrew Lady " and his " Casuistry of 
Homan Meals," he took mt)st of the materials at second-hand from 
the German. Still, if we were to assemble all his digressions, 
quotations, notes, and allusions, we should be sufficiently convinced 
of the immense and eccentric range of his reading, and at the same 
time of his tenacious hold of what he had read. Indeed, if we 
were to make such a collection, we should be no less astonished at 
the extent of another field of his memory. We should find that 
he was a close oliserver of human chnracter, and that he noted and 
remembered characteristic peculiarities and expressions of feeling 
with Boswellian minuteness. In the course of his wanderings he 
met persons of all ranks and conditions, and he seldom mentions a 
name without giving some characteristic particulars of the person. 

Then, as regards the other great intellectual force — the power 
of recovering analogous circumstances or detecting hidden resem- 
blances — De Quincey had a very remarkable, perhaps a still more 
remarkable, endowment. Speaking of his conversational powers, 
he says that in addition to the advantage of a prodigious memory, 
he had " the far greater advantage of a logical instinct for feeling 
in a moment the secret analogies or parallelisms that connected 
things else apparently remote." And again, writing of his powers 
of memory, he says, "I mention this in no spirit of l)oasting. Far 
from it; for, on the contrary, amongst my mortifications have been 
compliments to my memorj-^, when, in fact, any compliment that 1 
had merited was due to the higher faculty of an electric ajititude 
for seizing analogies, and, by means of those aerial pontoons, pass- 
ing over like lightning from one topic to another." ^ This power 
appears in his writings in several shapes. The quotations and 
allusions that show his wide knowledge of books and men are very 
obvious signs of the activity of his analogical faculty. His numer- 
ous illustrations, and the metaphorical cast of his language, are no 
1 Blackwood's Magazine, April 1845. 



40 THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. 

less striking. Less obtrusive evidences of the faculty, but still 
more valuable as being ei'idences of its strength, are his power of 
breaking through routine views, and the ingenious plausibility of 
his arguments. ,He very rarely as.sumes a traditional view without 
some note of exception, and this evidently not from a rough love 
of paradox — as is sometimes alleged by careless readers — but from 
his strong and delicate sensibility to the exact relations of things. 
Nothing can be more exquisite than his subtlety in distinguishing 
wherein things agree and wherein they differ — in what respects a 
traditional view is warrantable, and in what respects it is errone- 
ous. Equally charming to the lover of intellectual subtlety are 
his deliberate arrays of argument in support of a favourite thesis, 
as seen in such performances as his paper on the Essenes, or his 
attempt to whitewash the character of Judas Iscariot. His skill 
in urging every circumstance favourable to his opinion, and in ex- 
plaining away everything that bears against it, gives to the Eng- 
lish reader an idea of elaborate ingenuity not to lie obtained from 
any other of our recognised "leaders of literature." 

Were De Quincey's writings the outcome of nothing more gen- 
erally attractive than profound erudition, intellectual subtlety, and 
powers of copious expression, they would not have taken such a 
hold of public interest. But he was not an arid philosopher, a 
modern Duns Scotus or Thomas Aquinas. He tells us that he 
read " German metaphysicians, Latin schoolmen, thatimaturgic 
Platonists, and religious Mystics," but he tells us also that at one 
time " a tremendous hold was taken of his entire sensibilities by our 
own literature." Though he " well knew that his proper vocation 
was the exercise of the analytic understanding," he spent perhaps 
the greater part of his time in the exercise of the imagination, 
taking profound delight in " the sublimer and more passionate 
poets," in " the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the 
great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in 'Paradise Regained.' " 

He described himself as a Eudajmonist or Hedonist — -averse to 
everything that did not bring him immediate enjoyment ; and this 
half-humorous description may be allowed, if we take care not to 
forget that his enjoyments were of a peculiar nature. His pleas- 
ures were not boisterous — not dependent upon a flow of animal 
spirits. He was an intellectual Hedonist, or pleasure -seeker. 
During a considerable part of his time he was rapt in his favourite 
studies, in Avorks of the analytic understanding, of history, and of 
imagination. But even in daily life, in intercourse with the world, 
his imagination seems to have been preternaturally active. He 
was a close observer of character, as we can see both from his 
works and from the testimony of those that knew him. But, as 
we also know from both sources, his imagination was constantly 
active in shaping his surroundings into objects of refined pleasure, 



CHARACTER. 4 1 

ranging througli many varieties of grave and gay. Tie applied 
this transliguring process to the incidents of his own life - not 
inventing romantic or comical incidents, but dwelling upon certain 
features of what really took place, and investing them with lofty, 
tender, or humorous imagery. So with his friends and casual 
acquaintances. He was sufficiently observant of what they really 
did and said, was remarkably acute in divining what passed in 
their minds, and felt the disagreeable as well as the agreeaMe 
]K)ints of their character ; but he had the power of abstracting 
from the disagreeable circumstances. He fixed his imagination 
upon the agreeable side of an acquaintance, and transmuted the 
mixed handiwork of nature into a pure object of a^stlietic pleasure.^ 

His pleasures, we have said, were not boisterous. He had not 
the constitution for hearty enjoyment of life. In his Sketches 
he describes himself as being, in his boyhood, " the shiest of 
children," "constitutionally touched with pensiveness," "natu- 
rally dedicated to despondency." From his rejjose of manners he 
was a privileged visitor to the bedroom of his dying father. He 
was jiassionately fond of peace, had "a perfect craze for being 
despised " — considering contempt as the only security for un- 
molested repose— and always tried to hide his precocious accom- 
plishments from the curiosity of strangers. All his life through 
he retained this shyness. He had splendid conversational powers, 
and never was silent from timidity, at least when under the in- 
fluence of liis favourite opium ; and yet he rather avoided than 
cojirted society. He humorously tells us how he was horrified 
at a I'arty in London when he saw a large company of guests 
filing in one after the other, and divined from their looks that 
they had come to "lionise" the Opium-Eater. Mr Hill Burton 
represents the difficulty of getting him out to literary parties in 
Edinburgh in spite of his most solemn promises ; and we have 
from Professor !Masson a i)leasant instance of his shyness to 
recognise a new acquaintance in the street, and of his nervous- 
ness when he found himself the subject of observation. 

Such a man often contracts strong special attachments. In 
some of the impassioned records of the Confessions and the 
'Autobiographic Sketches,' we have evidence of the strength of 
De Quincey's affections. In writing of living friends, he usually 
practises a delicate reserve, and veils his tenderness under the 
mask of humour. Yet even to this there are some exceptions, 
such as the touching address to his absent wife in the Opium 
Confessions. In writing of departed friends, he poiu's out hia 
feelings without reserve. His sister Elizabeth, the outcast Anne, 

' It is not meant that lie was so unlike other men as to be doing this con- 
stantly ; only tiiat he seized upon and transfigured actual objects into ideals 
much more than tlie generality of intellectual men. 



42 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

the infant daughter of Wordsworth, and his unfortunate friend 
Charles Lloyd,' may be mentioned as objects that at different 
periods of his life engrossed his affections, and whose loss he 
de])lores with impassioned sorrow. 

He has sometimes been accused of letting his imagination dwell 
too favourably upon himself — of being especially vain. Now we 
call a man vain when he pretends to something that he does not 
possess, or when he makes an ostentatious display of his posses- 
sions. It has not been alleged that De Quincey was vain in the 
first and worst sense ; he has never been accused of exaggerating 
for the purpose of extorting admiration. But it is alleged that 
he was vain in the second sense ; that he makes a complacently 
ostentatious display of his ancestral line, of his aristocratic con- 
nections, of his romantic adventures, of his philosophical know- 
ledge, of his wonderful dreams. Such a charge con Id hardly be 
made but by a hasty or an undiscriminating reader. In the 
' Autobiographic Sketches ' we are never complacently invited 
to admire. We never think of the writer as a self- glorified 
hero, unless we are all the more jealous of being thrown into the 
shade. We are taken into his confidence, but he challenges our 
sympathy, not our admiration. He often speaks of himself 
humorously, but never with ostentatious complacency. He treats 
himself with no greater favour than any of the other subjects 
of his narrative. The trnth seems to be, that he who observed 
and speculated upon every human creature that came under his 
notice, observed and speculated most of all upon himself as the 
human creature that he was best acquainted with. He was too 
discerning a genius to be unconscious of his own excellence, and 
too little of a humbug to pretend that he was. 

As he has been accused of vanity, so he has sometimes been 
accused of arrogance, upon a still graver misconception of his 
shy, retiring nature, and his humorous self-irony. His dogmatic 
judgments of Plato, Cicero, Dr Johnson, and other eminent men, 
and his strong expressions of national and political prejudice, 
are sometimes quoted as signs of a tendency to domineer. It 
may safely be asserted that whoever takes up this view has not 
penetrated far into the peculiar personality of De Quincey. What- 
ever might be the strength of his expressions, and these were often 
exaggerated for comic effect, there have been few men of equal 
power more unaffectedly open to reasonable conviction. When 
he had made up his mind, he took a pleasure, usually a humorous 
pleasure, in jmtting his opinion as strongly as possible; but that 
was no index as regarded his susceptibility to new light. This 
we may reasonably infer from his character as revealed in his 
works ; and if we need further evidence, we have it in the worda 
1 The two last are mentioned in papers that have not been reprinted 



CIIAKACTER. 43 

of his personal acquaintance l\Ir Burton, who s})eaks of his "gentle 
and kindly spirit," and his boyish ardour at making a new dis- 
covery. Equally mistaken is the charge of jealousy, which comes 
from some admirers of Wordsworth and Coleridge. He always, 
and with obvious sincerity, professed an admiration for the extra- 
ordinary qualities of these men, but he knew exactly where their 
strength lay ; he knew that both were men of special strength 
cond)ined with sjiecial infirmity, and in his "Recollections" of 
them, while doing all justice to their merits, he did not scruple 
to exjjose their faults. On this ground he is charged with jeal- 
ousy. But before we admit a charge so inconsistent with what 
we know of his character otherwise, it must be shown that his 
criticisms are unfair, or that they contain anything that can be 
construed into an evidence of malice. Had I)e Quincey been 
a jealous, irritable man, instead of being "gentle and kindly" 
as he was, tlie universally attested arrogance and contemjituous 
manner of Wordsworth would have driven him to take part with 
the ' Edinburgh Review,' and in that case the great poet's reputa- 
tion might have been considerably delayed. 

I have dwelt at disproportionate length upon two qualities that 
are not marked in De Quincey's character, simply for the reason 
that unappreciative critics have described them as the ruling 
emotions of his [jorsonal reminiscences. To discuss them at such 
length without a guarding statement would create misconception. 
We may say, in loose terms, that two kinds of emotion almost 
engrossed his imagination, and that these, in the peculiar form 
they assumed in De Quincey, were diametrically antagonistic and 
inevitably destructive to emotions so petty as vanity or jealous 
egotism. These two ruling euiotions may be vaguely described 
as humour and sul)limity. 

Though naturally unfitted for rough merriment, for Teufels- 
droeckh laughter, De Quincey had a keen sense of the ridiculous. 
None of his paj)ers are without humorous strokes, and some of 
them are extravagantly humorous from beginning to end. Chris- 
topher North began to take opium, but desisted upon finding, as 
he said, that it destroyed his moral sensibilities, and jmt him into 
such a condition of mind that he was ready to laugh at anything, 
no matter how veneiable. It is sometimes said that opium had a 
similar eflfect upon De Quincey. But, as he would have delighted 
to point out, a distinct'on must be drawn as regards laughter at 
tilings veneral)le : the laugh may be malicious, designed to bring 
a venerable object into contenqjt, or it may be humorous, revolv- 
ing simply upon its own extravagance — degradation of the object 
being manifestly serious and ill-natured in the one case, and 
manifestly whimsical and good-natured in tlic other. Tliere is 
not a trace of malice in De Quincey's laughter. It is, as he 



4-4 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

descrilied it himself, merely "humorous extravagance." Tie is 
a humourist, nut a satirist. Sometimes he treats venerable persons 
or institutions with playful banter. Sometimes, by a kind of 
inverse process, he takes a pleasure in speaking of mean occupa- 
tions with expressions of mock dignity. One unique veiji of his 
humour consists in speaking with affection or admiration, or with 
a dry business tone, concerning objects usually regarded with 
horror and indignation. Whatever he does, as we shall see when 
we come to exemplify his humour, he does all with good-nature. 
He seldom applies his banter to living jiersons, and then in such 
a Avay that none but very touchy subjects could take offence. 
Indeed, so playful and stingless is his humour, that many profess 
themselves unable to see anytbing to laugh at in his jieculiar 
extravagances. In humour, of course, everything depends upon 
the reader's attitude of mind. De Quincey's own answer to his 
censors is complete: " iVo^ to sympdtldse is not to understand; 
and the playfulness which is not relished, becomes flat and insipid, 
or absolutely without meaning." 

His genius for the sublime is unquestioned. He was singularly 
open to impressions of grandeur. As in his humour, so in his 
susceptibility to sublime effects, it is difficult for an energetic 
people like us to lower ourselves into this peculiar state of mind. 
I say to lower ourselves, for the effort implies a diminution of 
our active energies and the intensifying of our passive suscepti- 
bilities. One of the best ways of understanding De Quincey in 
his sublime moods is to contrast him with Carlyle in his so-called 
hero-worship. The attitude of mind in worship, as usual'y under- 
stood, is a passive attitude — an attitude of reverential prostration, 
of adoring contemplation. If this be so, the term worship is 
incorrectly applied to Carlyie's attitude, and applies with much 
greater propriety to De Quincey's. Carlyie's state of mind seems 
to be a state of exalted activity. A man of force and vigour, he 
seems to sympathise with the efforts of his heroes — to feel himself, 
in thinking of them, exalted to the same pitch of victorious 
energy. Now this is not a state of prostration, of adoration, 
but the highest possible state of ideal activity — the moment of 
success in imaginary Titanic effort. On the contrary, De Quin- 
cey's attitude is essentially an attitude of adoration, of awe-struck 
passivity. He lies still, as it were,— remains quiescent ; passively 
allows magnificent conceptions to enter his mind and dwell there. 
Carlyie's hero-worship is more the intoxication of power than the 
worship of power, the sublime of egotism more than the sul)lime 
of adoration. The vision of great manifestations of power seems 
to act upon the one as a stimulant, upon the other as a narcotic, 
conspiring with the subduing inlluence of "all-potent opium." 

The power that walks in darkness, that leaves for the imaginar 



CHARACTER. 45 

tion a wide margin of "potentiality," is more impressive than 
power with a definite limit. Accordingly De Quincey tells us that 
"his nature almost demanded mystery." 

The pleasing astonishment ii)si)ired by visions of grandeur is 
nearly allied to' awe, and awe passes readily into panic dread. 
This De Quincey experienced in his opium-dreams. "Clouds of 
gloomy grandeur overhung his dreams at all stages of opium, and, 
in the last, grew into the darkest of miseries." }iis dreams were 
tumultuous — "with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms." 
Sometimes gorgeous spectacles, " such as never yet were beheld 
by waking eye," suddenly gave place to " hurrying trejiidations." 
Sometimes he was filled with api)rehensions of frightful disaster, 
while kept motionless by " the weight of twenty Atlantics." 

As regards the sensuous framework of De Quincey's emotions, 
it is interesting to notice his peculiar sensibility to the luxuries 
and grandeurs of the ear. He was not insensible to the " jtomps 
and glories" of the eye, but the ear was his most highly endowed 
sense. This is his own analysis. He recognised, he said, his sen- 
sibility to music as rising above the common standard by various 
tests — "by the indispensableness of it to his daily comfort, the 
readiness with which he made any sacrifices to obtain a 'grand 
debauch ' of that nature, ttc. etc." He might have mentioned as 
a good confirmation that he broke through the traditional expla- 
nation of yt]sehylus's "multitudinous laughter of the boundless 
ocean," as referring to the visual appearance of the waves, and 
asked whether it might not refer to the sounds of the ocean. For 
him the image would have had a greater charm if leferred to the 
ear. One of his favouiite pleas\ires of "imagination" (if we may 
use the word in a sense not exactly warranted by its derivation) 
was to construct ideal music out of the sounds of nature. " Often 
and often," he says, "seating myself on a stone by the side of the 
monntain-river lirathay, I have stayed for hours listening to the 

same sound to which so often C L and I used to hearken 

together with profound emotion and awe — the sound of pealing 
anthems, as if streaming from the open portals of .some illimitable 
cathedral ; and many times I have heard it of a quiet night, when 
no stranger could have been persuaded to believe it other than the 
sound of choral chanting — distant, solemn, saintly." 

When we view De Quincey on the active side, we find a great 
deficiency, corres[>onding to his intense occu[)ation with the exercise 
of the analytic understanding and the imaginaiion, both in the 
study and in the actual world. He was signally wanting in the 
])iishing activity of the l'>ngli>h race. Very characteristic is what 
he tells us of his boyhood, that when he was ordered to do a thing, 



46 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

instead of forthwith rushing off to do it, or stubbornly refusing 
obedience, like an active English child, he first made sure that he 
exactly understood the mandate, bothering his superior to express 
himself with scrupulous precision of language. 

He took little interest in the practical "questions" of the 
day. He is said to have written, about 182 1, a criticism of Lord 
Brougham under the title of " Close Comments on a Straggling 
Speech ; " but this, one may guess, was more humorous than 
practical. On one occasion he professed to " descend from his 
long habits of philosophical speculation to a casual intercourse 
with fugitive and personal politics" — namely, in 1S35, when he 
wrote his "Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Eadicalism " for 
'Tait's Magazine.' Here, however, quite as much as elsewhere, 
he is still the abstract philosoi)her, not the man of practice : he 
expressly refuses to discuss the policy of the rival i)arties on any 
patticnlar question, and confines himself to an original exposition 
of their abstract creeds, their mutual relations to the British Con- 
stitution. So little practical interest did he take in the current 
business of the nation, that at one time he acknowledges that he 
had not read a newspaper for three years. One must almost 
suppose that he informed himself of the proceedings of- existing 
jtarties with no livelier interest than he took in the proceedings of 
parties in ancient Greece or Eorae. 

His habits seem to have been very irregular. He did not want 
steadiness of application to special studies ; he did not roam rest- 
lessly from field to field, but set himself down to a subject, and 
mastered it, not content till he had read everything that he could 
find upon the j)articular subject. But he hated the labour of pro- 
ducing, at times with an absolute loathing. He wrote nothing 
till forced by pecuniary embarrassment. In the course of some 
remarks on Coleridge, he says that it is characteristic of an opium- 
eater to finish nothing that he begins ; and his own works to some 
extent bear out this humorous principle. 

Mr Hill Burton gives an interesting picture of his indifference 
to the ordinary ways of human business. "Only immediate crav- 
ing necessities could ever extx'act from him an acknowledgment of 
the common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilised 
society." "Those who knew him a little might call him a loose 
man in money matters; those who knew him closer, laughed at 
the idea of coupling any notion of pecuniary or other like respon- 
sibility with his nature." 

As regards his Opinions. He professed himself a Tory in 
politics, and spoke with sternness, and even ferocity, concerning 
Whii^s, Badicals, Repulilicans, Ftevolutionists, and "the faction of 
Jacobinism through its entire gamut." He objected to the Reform 



OPINIONS. 47 

Bill of 1832 that it had " ruftianised " Parliament — "introduced a 
Kentucky element-" into an assembly conducted with more than 
Iioman dignity. Theoretically, he held tliat both Whigs and 
Tories were necessary to the British Constitution, as guiding the 
two ojiposed forces of the nation, the one the democratic, tlie other 
the aristocratic ; that, properly understood, they were as two hemi- 
spheres, the one inco:ii[ilete without the other. In their views of 
current questions, (Uie party nuist be right and the other wrong, 
at least so far ; but as regarded their reasons for existing, it was 
absurd to ask which was right and which was wrong — both must 
exist. He belonged himself by birth to the aristocratic ])arty, 
and proV)al)ly in his philosophic way he considered it his duty to 
criticise liadicals from tlie aristocratic point of view, using strong 
language without any corresponding strength of feeling. 

As a literary critic, his catholicity of spirit and breadth of view 
were unique among the men of his time. Earely indeed, if ever, 
has a mind so calm, unprejudiced, and comprehensive, been applied 
to the work of criticism. In his own day lie was usually numbered 
among the " Lakers," or partisans of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Southey, He was so only in the sense of treating these remark- 
able men with justice. He, better than Jeffrey himself, knew the 
shortcomings of Wordsworth, condemned his theory of poetic 
diction, and made fun of absurdities in "The Excursion"; but 
he felt the shortcomings with calm discrimination, and was not 
misled by them into undervaluing the striking originality of 
Wordsworth's genius. He was one of the most devout of the 
admirers of Shakspeare, and, as we have seen, entered with pas- 
sionate rapture into the majestic harmonies of Milton ; but he had 
no part in the common bond of the Lakers — their wholesale con- 
tempt for Pope. He says, in one of his " uncollected " papers : — 

"In tlie literature of eveiy nation, we are naturally disposed to place in 
the hii;lic.>t rank those who Imve inoiluced some great and colossiil work — a 
'Paradise Lost,' a 'lianilet,' a 'Novum Or^anum' — wliicii [Jiesupposes an 
ell'ort of intellect, a cominvhensive grasp, and a sustaining pow<'i', for its 
original oonee]ition, correspondin*^ in grandeur to that ellurt, dill'erent in 
kiml, whiili must preside in its execution. But, after tiiis liigliest (dass, in 
wldch the power to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same 
scale of grandeur, tliere comes a second, in wiiiih biiiliant powers of execu- 
tion, applied to concei'tions of a very interior range, are allowed to estniiiisii 
a classical rank. Every literature jiossesses, besides its great national gallery, 
a caldnet of minor pieces, not less perfect in tiieir ]iolish, pos>il)ly more so. 
In reality, the characteristic of this class is elaborate ]ierfection — the point 
of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass and jiower of the 
oriLdnal creation, which (however exquisite in its class) moves within a 
Buialler sphere. To this class belong, lor exanqile, 'The Rape of the Lock, 
that finished jewel of English literature ; 'The Hunciud' (a siill more ex- 
quisite gem) ; 'The Vicar of Wakelicld' (iu its earlier part): in German, 
k<z." 



48 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

He has been charged with an open depreciation of Keats and 
Shelley. But this "\ve cannot reconcile with his papers on these 
poets. Without even giving him the benefit of his })lea, that tlie 
papers were "slight ini[ironiptus, perenij)torily exchuliiig a cnm- 
prehensive view of the subject," and disregarding his statement 
when they were reprinted that " in the case of Keats there is 
something which (after a la])se of several years) I could wish un- 
said, or said more gently," we may take them as they stand. He 
charges Keats with " trampling upon his mother-tongue as with 
the hoofs of a buffalo," and says of " Endymion " that it exhibits 
"the very midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapoury sen- 
timent, and of fantastic effeminacy." But this judgment of the 
earlier poem did not prevent him from calling the " Hyperion " 
" imperishable," and ascribing to it " the majesty, the austere 
beauty, and the simplicity of a Grecian temple enriched with 
Grecian sculpture." As for any dejueciation of Shelley, that I 
have been unable to find. He makes fun, in a kindly spirit, of 
Shelley's youthful confidence in waging war against the ruling 
powers, but at the same time he praises the youth's sincerity, 
pronounces him "the least false of human creatures," and speaks 
of "the jH'ofound respect due to his exalted powers." The truth 
is, that the charges made against De Quincey's criticisms are due 
to his unusual comprehensiveness of view and his sensibility to 
diversities of gifts. He was, to borrow his own words, "a large 
estimator of things as they are — of natural gifts, and their infinite 
distribution through an infinite scale of degrees, and the com- 
pensating accomplishments which take i)lace in so vast a variety 
of forms." Hence came numerous misapprehensions. Too many 
critics, in his day no less than now, credited their idols with every 
excellence of composition, every excellence of head and heart, 
every propriety of conduct in their several relations as superiors, 
inferiors, and equals. When De Quincey, who was never blind 
to a man's genuine claims to superiority, drew these claims into 
stronger relief by recording attendant defects, outcries arose on 
every hand that he was stealthily undermining established repu- 
tations. People refused to understand that a writer " hopelessly 
inferior in one talent " could yet be " vastly superior in another." 

A word on his estimates of foreign writers. His exposure of 
weak points in such universally established names as Homer, Plato, 
Cicero, and Goethe, is set down to no higher motive than a love of 
paradox, a ])a^:sion for inspiring wonder. Of this every reader 
must judge for himself. Only when we criticise the ciiticisms of 
De Quincey, we must bear in mind the unparalleled extent of his 
reading. This unique preparation for valuing literary powers 
entitles him to be criticised with reverence and modesty. 

In his " Biief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its foremost 



VOCABULARY. 49 

pretensions" (vrliich has not been reprinted), he is an umiaalified 
assertor of the superiority of modern to ancient literatuie. '• It 
is," he said, "a pitiable spectacle to any man of .sviiise and feeling, 
who happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his 
own ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately 
scorn and sorrow, to see young iieo[)le squandering their time and 
painful study upon writers not tit to unloose the shoes' latchets of 
many amongst their own com[)atriots ; making [lainfnl and remote 
voyages after the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected 
at their feet." "We engage to produce many scores of passages 
from Chaucer, not exceeding 50 to So lines, which contain more of 
picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature, 
more felicity of sentiment, more animation of narrative, and more 
truth of character, than can be matched in all the Iliad or the 
Odyssey." Again, — "To our Jeremy Taylor, to our Sir Thomas 
Browne, there is no approaih made in the Greek ele(|uence. The 
inaugural chapter of the ' Holy Dying,' to say nothing of many 
another golden passage ; or the famous passage in the ' Urn 
Buriall,' beginning, 'Now, since these bones have rested under 
the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' — have no parallel in 
literature." Finally, "For the intellectual qualities of elo(pience, 
in fineness of understanding, in depth and in large compass of 
thought, Burke far surpasses any orator, ancient or modern." 

In another paper, also excluded from his collected works, he 
exposes the "dire affectation" of many enthusiastic admirers of 
Greek and Latin writers : — 

"Raised almost to divine honours, never mentioned but with affected 
rapture, the classics of (Jreece and Rome are sehlom read — most of them 
m-ver ; are they indeed the clo.^et-conipaiiions of any man ? Surely it is 'me 
that these tollies were at an end ; that our practice were made to S(iuare a 
Utile better with our professions; and tiiat our j)leasures were sincerely 
drawu from those sources in which we pretend that they lie." 

ELEMENTS OP STYLE. 

Vocabulari/. 

De Quincey ranges with great freedom over the accumulated 

wealth of the language, his cai):icious memory giving him a ]iro- 
digious command of words. His range is perhaps wider than 
either Macaulay's or Carlyle's, as he is more versatile in the 
"pitch" of his style, and does not disdain to use the "slang" of 
all classes, from Cockney to Oxonian. 

In his diction, taken as a ^\hole, there is a great preponderance 
of words derived from the Latin. Lord Bioui:hani's opinion tiiat 
"the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favoured at the 
expense of that part which has so bAii[)ily coalesced from the Latin 

r 



50 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

or Greek," he puts aside as "resembling that restraint which some 
metrical writers have im])Ose 1 U[ion themselves — of writing a long 
copy of verses from which some particular letter, or from eiich Ime 
of which some different letter, should be carefully excluded." 
From various causes, he himself makes an excessive use of Latin- 
ised phraseology. First, his ear was deeply enamoured of a dig- 
nified rhythm ; none but long words of Latin origin were equal 
to the lofty march of his jieriods. Secondly, by the use of Latin- 
ised and quad technical terms, he gained greater precision than 
by the use of hnmely words of looser signification. And thirdly, 
it was part i)f his peculiar humour to write concerning common 
objei'ts in unfamiliar language. 

The strong point in his diction is his acquaintance with the 
language of the thoughts and feelings, with the subjective side of 
the English vocabulary. A writer naturally accumulates words 
in the line of his strongest interest ; and De Quincey had a 
paramount interest in the characters, thoughts, and afTeetions 
of man — human nature may be said to have been his constant 
St udy. 

A systematic student in none of the sciences, except perhaps 
meta])hysics and political economy, he nevertheless had gleaned 
technical terms from every science. He was indeed ever on the 
watch for a good word ; sciences, arts, and even trades, all alike 
he laid under greater or less occasional contributions. 

Sentences. 

Although De Quincey complained of the "weariness and re- 
pulsion " of the periodic style, he carried it to excess in his own 
composition. His sentences are stately, elaborate, crowded with 
qualifying clauses and parenthetical allusions, to a degree unpar- 
alleled among modern writers. 

In reviewing Whately's Rhetoric, he naturally objected to the 
dogma that " elaborate stateliness is always to be regarded as a 
worse fault than the slovenliness and languor which accompany a 
very loose style." He maintained, and justly, that "stateliness 
the most elaborate, in an absolute sense, is no fault at all, though 
it may be so in relation to a given subject, or to any subject 
under given circumstances." Whether in his own practice he 
always conforms to circumstances, is a question that must be left 
to individual taste. There is a certain stateliness in his sentences 
under almost all circumstances — a stateliness arising from his 
habitual use of periodic suspensions. To take two examples from 
his Sketches : — 

"Never in any equal nunilicr of nioutlis had my understanding so much 
expanded as duiiug this visit to Laxton." 



SENTENCES. 61 

When we tlirow this out of the elaborately periodic form, we, as 
it were, iclax the tension of the mind, and destroy the stately 
eflfect. Thus— 

"My uii(1erstan(iin<T expanded more during tliis vi-it to Laxton than 
during any three moutlis of my life." 

Again — 

" Er|nnlly, in faot, as regarded my ydiysins and my metn]ihj'si("s ; in short, 
upon ill! lines of advance that interested my ambition, I \Vii« going r.ipidly 
ahead." 

The statement has a very different effect when the periodic arrange- 
ment is reversed. 

Criticism of single sentences cannot easily be made convincing, 
and the critic is apt to forget the paramount principle that regard 
must be had to the context, to the nature of the sul^juct, to the 
eflfect intended by the writer. When a single sentence is ]iut iijxin 
its trial, there are many casuistical considerations that may legiti- 
mately be pleaded by tiie counsel for the defence. Still, if wu try 
De Quincey by his own rule against " unwieldy comprelu n.-^ivoness," 
we mu.st convict him of many violations. In almost every page 
we iind periods that cannot be easily comjirehended excejit by a 
mind of more than ordinary grasp ; and in many cases where, 
viewed with reference to the average capacity, he cannot be said 
to overcrowd, he is yet upon the verge of overcrowding. The 
following sentence may be quoted as one that stands upon the 
verge. It calls for a considerable effort of attention, and a long 
succession of such sentences would be exasperating. He is sjjeak- 
ing of his youthful habit of scrupulously making sure of the mean- 
ing of an order : — 

"So far fiom so( Icing to 'pettifognlise' — i.e., to find evasions for any 
purpose in a trii kster's minute tortuo>ities of construction — exactly in the 
oppusite direction, from mere excess of sincoity, most unwillingly I foumi, 
in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double 
interpretations." 

In this case the familiarity and the close connection of the ideas 
makes the effort of comprehension considerably less. \\'hen the 
subject-matter is so easy, the interspersi<in of such periods here 
and there cannot be called a fault. It is, on the contrary, to most 
ears an agreeable relief to the monotony of ordinary forms of 
sentence. lUit for the general reader, for the average capacity of 
easy understanding, such sentence-forms are multijdied to an in- 
tolerable degree in De Quincey's writing. And he does not always 
escape the besetting fault of long and crowded sentences — in- 
tricacy. 

As regards the length and elaboration of De Quincey's sentences, 



52 THOMAS DE QUINOEY. 

it is interesting to compare the first edition of the Opium Confes- 
sions with the final revision. Many alterations consist in filling 
out the sentences; anl, in a good many cases, two sentences are 
amalgamated into one. Take the following example, the first few 
sentences of the section entitled, "The Pleasures of OpiLun." In 
the original edition this stands — 

'• It is so Ions since I first took oi)ium, that if it had been a trifling incident 
in my HIV, I niii;lit have forgotten its date; but cardinal events are not to 
be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it, I remember that 
it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. J )uiing that .season 1 was in 
London, having conic thither for the first time since my entrance at col- 
lege. And my introduction to opium arose in tlie following way. Frtim 
an early :ige I had been accustomed to wash my head iu water at least once 
a-ilay," &c. 

In tlie revised edition we read — 

" It is very long since I first took opium ; so long, that if it had been a 
trifling inciilent in my life, i migiit have forgotten its date; but cardinal 
events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected witli it, I 
remember that this inauguration into the use of opium must be referred to 
the spring or to tlie autumn of ISO-l, during wliich seasons I was iu London, 
having come thither for the first time since my entrance at Oxford. And 
this event arose ill the following way : From an early age I had been 
accustomed," &c. 

The four sentences of the original are amalgamated into two, 
without any condensation of the original bulli. On the contrary, 
additions are made, one for the sake of emphasis, another for the 
sake of a more formal connection. 

Unity of Sentence. — A casuist would find no difficulty in arguing 
that De Quincey's sentences are not ow^?'-crowded. None of the 
qualifications or parenthetic allusions could be said to be altogether 
irrelevant ; and the difficulty of grasping the meaning being set on 
one side, it might be [ileaded that, as regards the main purpose of 
the sentence, and its place among the other sentences of the com- 
position, they are all of them indispensable. 

De Quincey, however, often offends beyond the possibility of 
justification, overloading his sentences in a gossiping kind of way 
with particulars that have no relevance whatsoever to the main 
statement. Of this habit I quote two examples, italicising the 
irrelevant clauses, and placing one of them in small capitals as 
being an ofi'ence of double magnitude, a second irrelevance foisted 
in ui)on the back of the first. The tiist sentence relates to the ex- 
posure of infants in ancient Greece; the second explains itself, 

"And because the ancients had a scruple (no scruple of mercy or of 
relenting conscience, but of selfish superstition) as to taking life by vio- 
lence from any creature not coiidenmed under some law, the mode of death 
must be by exposure on the open hills, wliere either the night air, or the 
fangs of a wolf, oftentimes of the great dogs — stiU preserved inmost parts 



PARAGRAPHS. 53 

of Greece {and, traced hach to the days of Homer as the public Tiuisances of 
travellers) — usually put an end to tiie unoffending creature's life." 

" It is as^ei'ted, as a general affection of liuninn nature, tliat it is impos- 
silile to read a book with satisfaction until one has ascertained whether the 
author of it be t;ill or short, corpulent or thin ; and, as to complexion, 
whether he be a 'black' man (which, in the 'Spectator's' time, was the 
absurd expression for a swarthy man), or a fair man, or a sallow man, or 
perhaps a frreen man, which Southri/ affirmed to be the proper description of 
vuiny stout artificers in Birmiiujham too much given to work in inetalHc 
fumes; ON WHICH account the name of HdUTiiEY is an abomination 

TO THIS DAY IN CEUTAIN FUIINAC^ES OF WARWICKSHIRE." 

The excrescences on the last sentence might be justified on the 
ground that they are humorous, although in severe exposition the 
humour would probably be ill-timed ; but the jiaronthetic informa- 
tion in the first is pedantic, and insufferably out of harmony with 
the rest of the sentence. Still even for this a casuist might find 
something to say, taking the parenthesis in relation to the subject- 
matter and De (.^uincey's pitch of feeling in the treatment of it. 

Paragrajyhs. 

We have seen in our Introduction that De Quincey studied 
"the philosophy of transition and connection." He is scrupu- 
lously elaborate, almost too elaborate, in explaining the point of 
Lis statements. 

No q nutation can be made from De Quincey that does not 
exemplify this. Still the analj^sis of a short passage may help 
to put the student upon the proper track for seeing how large 
a part of his composition is taken up with phrases of connec- 
tion : — 

" So it %cill always be. Those who {like Madame Dacier) possess no 
accomplishment but Greek, will of necessity set a superhuman value upon 
that literature in all its parts, to which their own narrow skill becomes an 
available key." 

The expressions in italics are all connective. A rapid writer, such 
as Macaulay, would have omitted "like Madame Dacier," and in 
place of the connective jieriphrasis at the end, would have said 
briefly and pointedly "Greek literature," leaving the reader to 
pass on without the labour of formally comprehending the con- 
nection. To continue : — 

" Besides that, over and above this coarse and conscious motive for over- 
ratiii!; that whicli reacts with nn eijuul and answerable overrating upon their 
own little phdological attainments, there is another auency at work, and 
quite unconsciously to the subjects of that agcncj', in disturbing the sanity 
of any estimate they may make of a foreign literature." 

This sentence is wholly connective, joining together the two in- 



54 THOMAS DE QUINOEY. 

ducements to overrate the value of a foreign literature — the 
second being stated as follows : — 

" It is the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferrinoj to anything 
created by onr own skill, or which reflects our own skill, as if it lay causatively 
and objectively in the rcflectinij thing itself, that pleasurable power which in 
very truth belongs subjectively to the mind of him who surveys it, from con- 
scions surcess in the exercise of his own energies. Hence it is that we see 
daily without surprise young ladies hanging enamoured over tlie pages of an 
Italian author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such as, clothed 
in plain mother Ei>glisii, would have been more repulsive to them than the 
distinctions of a theologian or the counsels of a great-grandmother. Tney 
mistake for a pleasure yielded by the author what is in fact the pleasure 
attending their own success in mastering what was lately an insuperable 
difficulty." 

This explicitness of connection is the chief merit of De Quincey's 
paragraphs. He cannot be said to observe any other principle. 
He is carried into violations of all the other rules by his inveter- 
ate habit of digression. Often upon a mere casual suggestion he 
branches off into a digression of several p:iges, sometimes even 
digressing from the subject of his first digression. The enormity 
of these offences is a good deal palliated by his being conscious 
that he is digressing, and his taking c;ire to let us know when he 
strikes off from the main subject and when he returns. Some of 
his papers are professedly "discursive," especially the 'Autobio- 
grai)hic Sketches.' 

The following is an example of his way of apologising for a 
digression. It illustrates, at the same time, his capital excel- 
lence of explicit connection. In a pa[ier professedly on Demos- 
thenes, he comes across Lord Brougham's Kectorial Address at 
Glasgow, and at once, leaving Demosthenes, proceeds to discuss 
several things mentioned in the address. At the close of this 
excursus he says : — 

" I have used my privilege of discursiveness to step aside from Demos- 
thenes to another .subject, not otherwise connected with the Attic orator than, 
first, by the common reference of both snbjei'ts to rhetoric ; but, secondly, 
by the accident of having been jointly discussed by Lord Brougham in a 
paper which (though now forgotten) obtained at the moment most undue 
celebrity." 

The apology, however, becomes the occasion of another offenca 
Before returning to Demosthenes, he throws in a few sentences 
of comment on the fact that in England the utterances of eminent 
public men on subjects beyond their jirovince and their acquire 
nients are received with a deference not accorded to men " speaking 
under the known privilege of professional knowledge." 

Should these digressions, obviously breaches of strict method, 
be imitated or avoided? The experienced writer will please him- 
self, and consult the effect that he intends to produce. But if he 



FIGUUES OF SPEECH. 55 

digresses after the model of De Qnincey, he may rest assured that 
he will be accu.sed of affectation, and will offend all that read for 
direct information concerning the subject in hand. 

Figures of Speech, 

De Qnincey may be described as a very " trojncal " writer (see 
Introduction p. 13). He uses comparatively few formal simili- 
tudes, but his pages are thickly strewn with " tropes," with meta- 
phors, personifications, synecdoches, and metonymies. 

His most characteristic and peculiar figure is personification. 
He makes a constant practice of applying predicates to names of 
inanimate things, and even to abstract nouns, as if they were names 
of living agents. 

This mannerism pervades all De Quincey's writings, and is so 
characteristic that we at once think of him when we find it appear- 
ing strongly in another writer. A few examples give but a faint 
impression com[)aied with what we receive when we read his vol- 
umes and meet with an example in every other sentence. It is 
peculiarly striking in the case of abstract nouns — above all, when 
one abstraction is represented as acting upon another ; thus — 

"Here I had terniinnted tin's chnptfT as at a natural jianse, wliiih, wliile 
sliuttiiig out for ever my eklr.st brother IVoiii the reailer's siglit aud from 
my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanent levolution in 
the character of my daily life. Two such ciianges, and both so abrupt, in- 
dicated iTuperiously the close of one era and the opening of anotlier. The 
advantages, indeed, wliich my brother had over me in years, in physical 
activities of every kind, in decision of purpose, and in energy of will — all 
wliicli advantages, besides, bonowed a raiilication from an obscure sense, on 
my part, of duty as incident to what seemed an ;ip]iointnient of Providence 
— inevitably liad controlled, and for years to come icuuhl have controlled, 
the tree spontaneous movements of a dreamer like mj'self." 

This treatment of abstractions as living agents may be studied also 
in the following passage, concerning the civilising influence of 
Athens through her theatre : — 

" But if it were a vain and arrogant assumjition to illuminate, as regarded 
those piiinal truths which, like the stars, are hniig aloft, and shine tor all 
alike, neither vain in)r arrogant was it to lly ht-r lalcons at gmte almost as 
high, if not life, yet light ; if not absolute birth, yet moial regeneration 
and fructifying wai-mth — these were quickening forces wiiiedi abundantlj' 
she was able to engratt upon truths else slumbering and inert. Not affect- 
ing to teach the new, she coiihl yet vivify the old. Those moral echoes, 
so solemn and pathetic, that lingered in the ear from her stately tragedies, 
all sjioke with the authority of voices from the grave. The great jihantoms 
that crossed her stage, all pointed with shadowy lingers to shattered dynas- 
ties and the ruins of once regal houses, Pelopidaj or Labdacidte, as monu- 
ment* of sufferings in expiation of violated morals, or sometimes — which 
even more thriilingly spoke to human sensibilities — of guilt too awlul to be 



56 THOMAS DE QUI^XEY. 

expiated. And in the midst of these appalling records, what is their ulti- 
mate soliitioii ? From whiit key-note does Atlieiiinn Tra<^pdy trace the ex- 
pansion of its own dark impassioned nnisic ? "XISpis {hybris) — tlie spirit of 
outra.fce con]iled witii the spirit of insult and arrDgant self-assertion — in that 
temper lurks the original impulse towards wrong; and to that temper the 
Greek drama adapts its monitory legends. The doctrine of the Hebrew 
Scriptures iis to vicarious retribution is at times discovered secretly moving 
through the scenic poetry of Athens. His own crime is seen liuntiiig a 
niiin tluough five generations, and finding him finally in the persons of his 
mnoceut descendants." 

The tropical applying of abstractions to words expressing move 
ment — see in the above ])assage "lurking," "moving," "hunting," 
&c. — is a prominent De Quinceyism. Ideas " lurk under " terms ; 
distinctions " move obscurely " in the minds of men ; revolutions 
" travel leisurely through their stages ; " " the guardianship of 
civilisation suddenly unfolds itself like a banner" over jiarticular 
nations ; a danger " approaches and wheels away — threatens, but 
finally forbears to strike," kv. kc. 

The Sources of his Similitudes. — De Quincey's similitudes are 
drawn from an immense sphere of reading and observation. With- 
out pretending to be exhaustive, we may mention separately some 
of his principal fields. 

(i.) The characteristics of lower animals. He very often en- 
livens an adjective of quality by appeniling a comparison to some 
animal possessing the quality in an extreme form. We are con- 
stantly meeting such phrases as " restless as a hyena ; " " rare as a 
phoenix ; " " by original constitution strong as one of Menx's dray- 
horses ; " "Burke, a hunting leopard, coupled with Schlosser, a 
German poodle." In owning himself baffled to find any illustra- 
tion of Richter's activity of understanding, he shows how deliber- 
ately he ransacked his knowledge in pursuit of similitudes : — 

"What tSien is it that I claim ? Briefly, an activity of understanding so 
restless and indefatigable that all attempts to illustrate, or ex)>ress it ade- 
quately, by images borrowed from the natural world, from the motions of 
beasts, birds, insects, &c., from the leaps of tigers or leopards, from the 
gainiioUiiig and tumbling of kittens, tlie antics of monkeys, or the lunning 
of antelopes and ostriches, &c., are baffled, confounded, and made ridiculous 
by the enormous and overmastering superiority of impression left by the 
thing illustrated." 

(2.) Works of travol. A great reader of books of travel, he 
found in the customs and natural phenomena of foreign countries 
extreme examples, and thus was able to give to his similes a pecu- 
liar finish, and at times an independent value, such as attaches to 
some of the similes of Milton. Where for an image of hopeful 
change a less accomplished artist would simply make comparison 
to the opening of spring, De Quincey is able to cite the opening of 
spring in Sweden, and dwells upon a gorgeous picture of the sud- 



FIGURES OF SPEECH. 57 

den vernal outburst in that country. An unfinished book that 
another would comimre sim[)ly to an unfini.shid buihling, he com- 
pares to "a ,Spa7iis// brid.^e or aqueduct begun upon too great a 
scale for the resources of the architect ; " oi)ening up remote col- 
lateral reflections to the reader that has time to pause and consider. 
Again, illustrating how soon we forget the features of dead or dis- 
tant friends, he says — 

"The faces of iiit';Mits, though they are divine as flowers on a savanna o' 
Texas, or as tlie earollinf:; of hiiiis in a forest, are, like Uoweis in a sMvanna 
of Texas, or the eamlling of birds in a forest, soon oveiLakeu by the pur- 
suing darkness that swallows up all things human." 

Again — 

"Yts, reader, countless are the mysterious handwritings of grief or joy 
which liave inscrilied tlieinsehes successively Upon the paliini'si-st of your 
brain ; and like the annual leaves nt abi)i-iginal fure.sts, or the undissolving 
snows on the Himalaya, or liglit falling upon light, the eudless strata have 
covered u[i each oiLer iu lorgetfuluebS." 

Once more — 

". . . 'the anarchy of dreams' presides in German philosophy; and the 
restless elements of opinion, throughout every region of deliate, mould ihcm- 
selves eternally, like the billowy sands of the de>ert, as beheld by Biuce, 
into towering columns, soar upwai'ds to a gi'hly altilude, then stalk al)out 
for a minute, all aglow with tier}' colour, and finally unmould and 'dis- 
limn,' with a colla[ise as sudden as the motions of that eddying breeze 
iiuiler which their va[ioury architectuie had arisen." 

This last image was a favourite with him. He first used it in 
the article on JJr Parr : — 

"The brief associations of public carriages or inns are as evanescent as 
the sandy columns of the(ireat Descrt, which the caprices of the wind build 
up and scatter, sha[ie and unsliape, willun the brief revolution of a minute." 

He used it again in the preface to his ' Political Economy ' : — 

"... or, like the fantastic architecture which the wimis are everlast- 
ingly pursuing iu the Aiabian desert, wouhl exhibit phantom arrays of 
llceting cohunus and tluctuatmg ediliccs, whicdi, under the very breath that 
had created them, would be for ever collapsing into dust." 

(3.) He very often comjiares individuals to celebrate^! person- 
ages in literature, by a kind of synecdoche. One specimen must 
suthce : — 

" Here at this time was living Mr Clarkson, — that son of thunder, that 
Titan, who was, in fact, the one great Atlas that bore up the Slave Trade 
Abolition cause — now resting from his mighty labours and nerve-shatteriug 
perils." 

(4.) The feats of magic furnish him with several expressions of 
astonishment. "Thaumaturgic " is a favnurite word; he speaks 
of the " rhabdomantic " power of Christianity in evoking dormant 



58 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

feelings; and he compares the transformation worked by a lady 
upon lier husband to the achievements of "some mighty caliph or 
lamp-bearing Aladdin." 

(5.) From music he draws some very favourite metaphors. 
Thus : He knows " human des})ondencies through all their in- 
Hmte r/amut." Christopher North at Oxford "enjoyed an unlim- 
ited favour with an infinite gamut of friends and associates, run- 
ning through every key, the diapason closing full in gioom, cobbler, 
and stable-boy." Ceylon is " a panorg anon fur modulating through 
the whole diatonic scale of climates." 

(6.) He takes many metaphors from the technical language of 
law and trade. The question as to the comparative value of an- 
cient and modern learning is "the great pending suit between 
antiquity and ourselves." "Such as these were the habits and 
the reversionary consolations of Pompey." "The other historic 
person on whom I shall ]n-obably be charged with assault and 
battery is Josephus." "The Jew did not receive the bribe first 
and then peipetrate the treason, but trusted to llnm-.vn good faith 
at three months after date.''' Writing of Pope's composing satire at 
the instigation of Warburton, he says : — 

" To enter a lionse of hatred as a junior partner, and to take the stock of 
malice at a valuation (we copy from advertiseuifiits), tkatis an ignoble act." 

These metaphors are very often humorous. Thus — 

"A Canadian winter for my money ; or a Russian one, where every man 
is but a co-]uoprietor with the north wind, in the i'ee-simjde of his own 
ears. " 

(7.) Sometimes he takes a fancy to draw upon mathematics, 
medicine, or physical science, 'thus — 

"As to Symnions, he was a Whig ; and his covert purpose was to secure 
Milton fur his own party, before that party was fully secreted by the new 
teiideiii'ies ber^inning to move amongst tlie ])artisanshii)s of the age. Until 
Dr Sacheverel came, in Queen Anne's reign, the crystallisations of Whiw 
and Tory were nidiiiieiital and iiicomidete. Symmons, therefore, was tnde'r 
a bias, and a niorliid kind of deflection." 

Hoiv far he observes the conditions of effective comparison. — 
De Quincey is a model of exact comparison. To point out with 
de'iberate — some would say ^yith tedious — scrupulosity the re- 
sembling circumstances in the things compared, ])eculiarly suits 
his subtilising turn of nund. He never seems to be in a hurry, 
and does not aspire to hit off a similitude in a few pregnant 
words ; his characteristic is jiunctiiiuus accuracy, regardless of 
exjiense in the matter of words. 

Out of numerous available examples may be quoted his com- 
parison of the distiibulion of men in Ceylon to the distribution 
of material in a peach : — ■ 



FIGURES OF SPEECH. 59 

"But strange indeed, where eveiything soems strange, is the arrnnge- 
ment of tlie Ceyloiieso tcnitoi y and jicujile. Take a jieacli : wliat yon call 
the flesh of the peach, the sulistaiice whieh you eat, is nuissed orbiiularly 
roiiiid a central t-tone — ol'ten as large as a pietty large strawbi-rry. Kow, 
ill Ceylou the eeiitral district, answering to tliis i)cacli-stoiie, constitutes a 
fierce little Lillijiuiian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, 
of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and peifectly 
distinct liy the character and origin of its population. The peach-stone is 
called Kandy, and the people Kandyans." 

Seeing that he possessed an extraordinary power of " elevating " 
by means of similitudes, it is natural to ask whether lie is ever 
guilty of undiie exaggeration. When this question is put con- 
cerning De Quincey, attention tuins at once to his Opium Con- 
fessions and his ' Autobiograpliic Sketches.' In these works he 
describes his own feelings in metajihors taken from the language 
of the great operations of Nature, and draws elaborate comi^arisons 
between momentous epochs in his own life, and such imposing 
phenomena as the uncontrollable migrations of the buffalo herds. 
Are these similitudes extravagantly hyperbolical 1 Do they offend 
the reader as rising extravagantly aliove the dignity of the sub- 
ject 1 Much depends upon our point of view. If we view the 
autobiograi)her unsympathetically, from the stand-point of our own 
personality — if we regard him simply as a unit nmong the millions 
of mankind, a speck upon "the great globe itself," — we shall 
undoubtedly be shocked at his venturing to compare revolutions 
within his own insignificant being to revolutions affecting vast 
regions of the earth. But if we view him as he means that 
we should view him, sympathetically, from the stand-point of 
his jiersonality, we shall not be shocked at the audacity of his • 
similitudes — we shall not consider them extravagant, or out of 
keeping with the feelings proper to the occasion. Epochs and 
incidents in our own life are more important to us, bulk more 
largely in our eyes, than epochs and incidents in the history of 
a I'ution. The violent death of a near and dear relative or friend 
touches us more profoundly than an earthi|uake at Lisbon, a 
massacre at Cawnpore, or a revolution in Paris. De Quincey 
says nothing that has not been felt more or less dindy by all 
human beings when he says, that on his entering Oxford the 
profound public interest concerning the movements of Napoleon 
" a little divided with me the else monopoHsinfi awe uttached to 
tlie solemn act of latincliing myself iipon the tvorld." 

Concerning the novelty or originality of his .'similitudes. He 
has never been accused of jjlagiarising. When he borrows a 
figure of speech, he gives a formal acknowledgement ; at least 
he does so in .some cases, and I have never seen any clandestine 
api>ropriations charged against him. '• As I have never allowed 
myself," he says, " to covet any man's ox, nor his ass, nor any- 



60 THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. 

thing that is his, still less would it become a philosopher to covet 
other peo[)le's images or metaphors." And if he had, we might 
say, as he said of Coleridge's plagiarisms, that such robbery would 
have been an honour to the person robbed. We may be sure, 
from the unique finish of his similitudes, that the stolen property 
would have improved in value under his hands. 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. 

De Quincey cannot be ranked among simple writers. His style 
has certain elements of simplicity, but, at the same time, it has, 
in a considerable degree, every element of abstruseness specified in 
a manual of composition. 

(i.) He makes an excessive use of Latinised, scholarly, and 
technical terms. Thus — 

"I myself, who have never heen a great wine-drinker, used to find that 
h:ilf-a-duzen glasses of wine advantageously affected t\w f acuities, hricclitened 
and intensified the consciousiiess, and gave to the mind a feeling of being 
'ponderibus librata suis.' " 

Concerning his ' Logic of Political Economy,' Mr M'Culloch says 
— " It would have been more popular and successful had it been 
less scholastic. It is right to be logical, but not to be perpet- 
ually obtruding logical forms and technicalities on the reader's 
attention." 

(2.) In his choice of subjects he prefers the recondite — offering, 
in this respect, a great contrast to Macaulay. 

In his Essays " addressed to the understanding as an insulated 
faculty," he runs after the most abstruse problems. Take the 
examples quoted in his preface to the first volume of his ' Collected 
Works.' In the " Essenes," he defends a new speculation on a 
puzzling subject with considerations familiar only to archa^ologic 
theologians. In his " Caesars," his purpose is not so much a 
condensed narrative as an elucidation of doubtful points. His 
" Essay on Cicero " deals with problems of the same nature. 
And so with many others of his articles. The volume on 'Leaders 
in Literature,' wherever it keeps faithful to its title, is taken up 
mainly with the "traditional errors affecting them." Even his 
'Autobiographic Sketches' turn aside upon various incidents to 
the pursuit of subtle speculations, such as disquisitions on the 
possible issues of an action, recondite analysis and conjecture of 
motives, consideration of delicate points of tiiste, nice investiga- 
tion of the sources of the influence of a poem or a picture. His 
'Loi;ic of Political Ecmomy' deals with the most puzzling and 
abstruse principles of the science. 



SIMPLICITY. 61 

(3.) So far from shirking — as is tlie manner of simple Avriti-ra 
— every call to modify a bare assertion, lie revels in nice dis- 
tinctions and scrupulous qualifications. This is a part of his 
exactness. 

(4.) We have already noticed his excessive use of abstract terms 
and forms of expression. What we exem[)lified as his favourite 
figure is not good for rapid perusal. When a transaction is 
represented as taking place, not between living agents, but be- 
tween abstract qualities of those agents, a mode of statement so 
unfamiliar is not to be comprehended without a considerable effort 
of thought. 

(5.) His general structure is not simple. Long periods, each 
embodying a flock of clauses, are abstruse reading. Even his 
explicitness of connection has not its full natural effect of mak- 
ing the effort of comprehension easy. He connects his statements 
with such exactness that the explicitness becomes a burden. 

Certain things may be said in extenuation of this neglect of the 
ordinary nienns of sinqdicity. 

I. With all his abstruseness he does observe certain points of a 
simple style. 

(i.) He often repeats in simpler language what he has said with 
characteristic abstractness of phrase. Thus, in the case of his 
cardinal distinction between the literature of knowledge and the 
literature of power — 

"In that great social origan which, collectively, we call literature, tliere 
may be (iisiiii<,'uisheil two separate offices that niay blend, and often do so, 
but capable, severally, of a severe insulaiion, and naturally lilted for re- 
ciprocal repulsion. There is. first, the \\U-va,t\\\e oi knuwlcdtie ; and secondly, 
the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function 
of the second is to move. The first is a rudder ; the secoud, an oar or a 
sail. " 

(2.) In dealing with dates and statistics, he has a commendablo 
habit of devising helps to the reader's memory by means of familiar 
com|iarisons. Thus — 

"This was in 1644, the year of Marston Moor, and the penultimate year 
of the rarliauientary war," 

Again — 

"Glasgow has as many thousands of inhabitants as there are dnys in the 
year. (1 so state the population in order to as ist the reader's memory.)" 

In like manner he hel[>s us to remember the territorial extent 
and the populatitm of Ceylon by a comparison with Ireland and 
Scotland. 

(3.) A characteristic figure with him is a figure taken from 
simple movements : — 



62 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

"This trrowth of intellect, outrunning the capncities of the physical 
structure;" "by night lie succeeded in reaching the farther end of his 
duties;" "he walked conscientiously through the services of the day." 
" Extraordinary erudition, even though travelling into obscure and sterile 
fields, has its own ])eculiar interest. And about Dr Parr, moreover, there 
circled another and far different interest." 

It must, however, be admitted that such forms of expression, 
though intrinsically simple, are abstruse to the majority from not 
being familiar. 

II. His technical terms can often justif}' their existence on the 
plea that they give greater precision. Thus — 

"There was a prodigious ferment in the first hnlf of the seventeenth 
century. In the earlier bisection of the second half there was a general 
settling or deposition from this ferment." 

So in giving the dimensions of the famous Ceylon pillar — 

"The ]iil]ar measures six feet by six — i.e., thirty-six square feet — on the 
flat quadrangular tablet of its ujipcr horizontal surface." 

Once more, writing of the impossibility of translating certain 
words by any single word, he says — ■ 

"To take an image from the language of ecli)ises, the correspondence 
between the disk of tiie original word and its translated representative is, in 
thousands of instances, not annular ; the centres do not coincide ; the words 
overlap." 

In all these cases there is no denying that the expression is 
superlatively precise, although i)erhai)S all the precision required 
under the circumstances might have bei-n given in more familiar 
language. 

Such are some of the circumstances that compensate his ab- 
gtriiseness. Imitators should see that they make equal compen- 
sation. The assertion may be hazarded that writers aiming at 
wide popularity are not safe to use so much abstruse language as 
De Quincey, whatever may be their powers of compensating. 

Clearness. 

Perspicuity. — To readers that find no difficulty in the abstruse- 
ness of his diction, De Quincey is tolerably pers|)icuous. His 
virtues in this respect are summed up in the capital excellence of 
his paragraphs, explicitness of connection. If we find his diction 
easy, he is so scrupulous in keeping before us the general arrange- 
ment of his composition, as well as the bearing of particular state- 
ments, and even, as we have seen, of his numerous digressions, 
that we are seldnm in danger of confusion. 

Exactness, however, rather than perspicuity, is his jjeculiar 
merit. On this he openly prides himself. In an article on Ceylon, 



CLEARNESS. G3 

having said that a young officer, marching with a small body of 
men through the island, took Kandy in his route, he appends a 
fdotnote to the word " took " : — 

"This phrase is eqiiivocnl ; it bears two senses — the traveller's sense and 
the siildier's. But wc rarely make such errors in the use of words ; the 
error is original in the government documents themselves." 

He certainly had reason to glory. None of our writers in 
general literature have shown themselves so scrupulously precise. 
His works are still the crowning delicacy for lovers of formal, 
punctilious exactness.^ 

Of this exactness we have already given several illustrati(ms. 
We have illustrated the exactness of his conij)arisons, and the fact 
that he often purchases exactness at the price of simplicity. Ref- 
erence may also be made to the account of his opinions and the 
passage there quoted. 

His minuteness in modifying vague general expressions is par- 
ticularly worthy of notice, and, when not pushed to a* pedantic 
extreme, worthy of imitation. He seldom says that a thing ia 
remarkable withont adding in what respects. A man's life is 
" notable in two points ; " has " two separate claims upou our 
notice : " — 

"A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving through the leisurely 
stages of a hiographical mi-nioir, lays open, to readers jyrepared for such 
revelations, tico separate theatres of interest ; one in his personal career, the 
other in his worlds and his intellectual development." 

In like manner, " that sanctity which settles on the memory of 
a great man, ought, ujjon a double motive, to be vigilantly sustained 
by his countrymen." When he i)redicates a superlative, he is ex- 
emplarily scrupulous to let us know what particulars it ai^plies to. 
Aristotle's Rhetoric is " the best, as regards the primary purpose 
of the teacher ; thour/h othenvise, for elegance," etc. Jeremy Taylor 
and Sir T. Browne are " undoubtedly the richest, the most dazzling, 
and, with reference to their matter, tiie most captivating of all 
rhetorician.s." When he puts the question, " Was Ciesar, upon 
the whole, the greatest of men ?" he does not at once pronounce 
roundly "Yes" or "Ko." He first explains in what sense he 
means great : — 

" Was C;esar, ujton the whole, the greatest of men ? We restrict the 
question, of course, to the classes of uieu great in action; great by ilie extent 



1 With a legitimate feeling of his own innocence, he often censures the lax 
practice of other writers. lie is angry with Dr .Johnson for not further explain- 
ing what he meant liy callin<; I'ofie " the most correct of pnets " " Correctness," 
lie exclaims, "in what? Tliink of tl>e admirable (pialilications for settlint: the 
scale of sucli critical distinctions which tliat man must have had who turned out 
upon this vast world the single oracular word 'correctness' to shift for itself, 
and ex]ilain its own meaning to ail generations !" 



64 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

of their influence over their social contemporaries ; great hy th/owing open 
avenues to extended powers that previously had been closed ; great by mak- 
ing obstacles once vast to become trivial ; or prizes that once were trivial to 
bo glorified by expansion." 

As an example of this " pettifogulising " on the larger scale, 
we may quote his footnote on the maxim " De mortuis nil nisi 
bonum " : — 

"This famous canon of charity {Concerning the dead, let us have nothing 
but ivhat is kind and favourable) lias furnished an inevitable occasion for 
much doubtful casuistry. The dead, as those pre-eminently unable to defend 
themselves, enjoy a luitural privilege of indulgence amongst the generous 
and considerate ; but not to the extent which this sweeping maxim would 
proclaim, — since, on this principle, in cases innumerable, tenderness to the 
dead would become the ground of cruel injustice to the living : nay, the 
maxira would continually counterwork itself; for too inexorable a forbear- 
ance with regard to one dead person would oftentimes effectually close the 
door to the vindication of another. In fact, neither history nor biography 
is able to a^ove a step without infractions of this rule ; a rule emanating 
from the lilind kin<lliiiess of grandmothers, who, whilst groping in the dark 
after one individual darling, forget the coUateial or obli(iue results to others 
without end. These evils being perceived, equitable casuists began to revise 
the maxim, and in its new form it stood thus — ' De mortuis nil nisi venom ' 
(' Concerning the dead, let us have nothing but what is true '). Why, certainly, 
that is an undeniable right of the dead ; and nobody in his senses would 
plead for a small percentage of falsehood. Yet, again, in that shape the 
maxim carries with it a disagreeable air of limiting the right to truth. Un- 
less it is meant to reserve a small allowance of fiction for the separate use of 
the living, why insist upon truth as peculiarly consecrated to the dead ? If 
all people, living and dead alike, have a right to the benefits of truth, why 
specify one class, as if in silent contradistinction to some other class, less 
eminently privileged in that res]iect ? To me it seems evident that the 
human mind has been long groping darkly after some separate right of the 
dead in this respect, but which hitherto it has not been able to bring into 
reconciliation with tlie known rights of the living. Some distinct privilege 
there should be, if only it could be sharply defined and limited, through 
which a special prerogative might be recognised as among the sanctities of 
the grave." 

Strength. 

De Quincey's style, as the reader has doubtless remarked in 
preceding extracts, is not animated — meaning by animation the 
presentation of ideas in rapid succession — it stands, in fact, to use 
a phrase of his own, in " polar antithesis" to the animated style. 
His prevailing characteristic is elaborate stateliness. He finds the 
happiest exercise of his powers in sustained flights through the 
region of the sublime, 

I. Let us first exemplify his elevation of style as applied to the 
ordinary subjects of lofty composition, such as men of extra- 
ordinary powers, secret machinations, great natural phenomena, 
scenes of horror and confusion. 



STREXOTIT. 65 

Tie had not, like Carlyle, a formal gallery of historical heroes. 
He seldom lends his powers of style to glorifying the great men of 
history. His tendency was rather to discover and de\ elop lurking 
objects of admiration or astonishment — the daring of Zebek Dorchi 
against the "mighty behemoth of Muscovy," the energetic hardi- 
hood of the slave that attempted to assassinate tlie Emperor C'om- 
modus, the erection of a statue to the slave vEsop, and suchlike. 
The following is his account of "Walking Stewart," whom almost 
anybody else vi^oald have i)assed by as a harebiained enthusiast : — 

"His mind was a mirror of the sentient universe — the whole mighty 
vision that had fleeted before his e_yes in this world — tlie armies of H3'der 
All and his son 'i'ippoo, with oriental and barbaric pageantry; the civic 
graiuleur of England ; the great deserts of Asia and America ; tiie vast 
capitals of Europe — London, with its eternal agitations, the ceaseless ebb 
and flow of its 'mighty heart' ; Paris, shaken by the fierce torments of rev- 
olutionary convulsions ; tiie silence of Lapland ; and the solitary forests of 
Canada ; with the swarming lite of the torrid zone ; together wiih innumer- 
able recollections of individual joy and sorrow that he had partiii|iated in by 
sym[)athy, — lay like a map beneath him, as if eternally co-present to his 
view ; so that, in the contemplation of the prodigious whole, he had no 
leisure to separate the parts or occupy his mind wiih details." 

The machinations of secret societies had a great charm for him. 
Here is a passage concerning the Hetseria of Greece : — 

"It cannot be denied that a secret society, with the grand and almost 
awful purposes of the Hetieria, spite of some taint which it had received in 
its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to till the im- 
agination, and to command homage from the coldest. Whispers ciiculating 
frotn mouth to mouth of some vast cons]iiracy mining subterraneously 
beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors — whispers of a great de- 
liverer at hand whose mysterious Laharvin, or mighty banner of the Cross, 
was already dimly descried through northern mists, and whose eagles were 
already scenting the carnage and 'savour of death ' from iiniumeralile hosts 
of Moslems — whispers of a revolution which was again to call, as with the 
trumpet of resurrection, from the grave, the land of Timoleon and Epaniin- 
ondas ; such were the preludings, low and deep, to the tempestuou;) over- 
ture of revolt and patriotic battle which now ran through every nook of 
Greece, and caused every ear to tingle." 

The following is an example of his description of sublime natural 
phenomena. It occurs as a similitude : — 

" Has the reader witnessed, or has- he heard described, the sudden burst 
— the explosion, one might say — by which a Swedish winter ]ias>cs into 
spring, and spring simultaneously into summer ? The icy sceptre of winter 
does not there thaw and melt away by just gradations : it is broken, it is 
shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence brought home to every 
sense. No second type of resurrection, so mighty or so all'ecting, is mani- 
fested by nature in southern climates. Such is the lieai'.long tumult, such 
the ' torrent rapture' by which life is let loose amongst the air, the earth, 
and the waters under the eartli. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is iu 

E 



66 THOMAS DE QUIIS'CP^Y. 

manifestations of power and life, by comparison with climates tlirt have no 
winter; such, and marked with features as distinct, was," &c. 

As an example of his power of depicting horrors, take his 
account of the sack of Enniscorthy — 

" Next came a scene which swallowed up all distinct or separate features 
in its frniitic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the 
gentry for miles around who had conirref^'ated in that town as a centre of 
security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat, but to 
instant flitrlit. At one end of the street were seen tlie reliel pikes, and liay- 
onets, and fierce faces, already gleaming thiough tlie smoke; at the other 
end volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs, and 
blazing ratters beginning to block up the a\eiiues of escape. Tlien began 
the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in 
human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of I'err, and the 
very delirium of vindictive malice — private and ignoble hatred, of ancient 
origin, shnnuling itself in the ma.sk of patriotic wrath ; the tiger-glare 
of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs and the never-to-be-for- 
gotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation ; panic, self-palsied by 
its own excess ; flight, eager or stealthy, according to tiie temper and the 
means ; volleying puisuit ; the very fi-euzy of agitation, uuiler every mode 
of excitement ; and here and there the desperation of maternal love vic- 
torioits and supreme above all lower passions. I rccapitidate and gather 
under general abstractions many :in individual anecdote reported by tho.se 
who were on that day present in Enni.scorthy ; for at Ferns, not far otf, and 
deeply interested in all those transactions, I had jirivate fiiends, intimate 
partici]iators in the trials of that fierce hurricane, and joint sufl'erers with 
those who sull'ered most." 

It is this " recapitulation and gathering under general abstrac- 
tions" that raises the passage above those hideous accumulations 
of horriblo particulars faithfully reported by newspaper correspon- 
dents from seats of war. His "Revolt of the Tartars" is a good 
example of sustained grandeur of narrative and description ; there 
also he abstains from individual horrors, and raises the imagination 
to dwell with awe upon the passions raging through the strife. 

11. Let us now constitute a special section for his peculiar flights 
of sublimity, not because they are essentially different from the 
preceding, but because they really have, what they claim to have, 
a sliglit element of peculiarity ; because, in short, they are experi- 
mental. 

It is sometimes said that De Quincey claims to be the originator 
of impassioned prose. He makes no such claim. He knew as 
well as anybody that impassinned prose had been written long 
before his day, by Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, 
Burke, and others.^ What he did claim was to be the autlior of 
a "mode of impassioned jirose ranging under no |)reccdents tliat he 
was aware of in any literature." He speaks of the utter sterility 

1 Two, at least, of his impas.sioned apostrophes are modelled upon Sir Walter 
Raleigh's famous apostrophe to Death. 



SUBLIMITY. 67 

of universal literature, not ii) impassiDiied prose, but in '■^ one de- 
partment of iiniia.ssioiied jirose." Tli;it dejiartiiieiit may be de- 
scribed Avith sufficient preci.sion as "impassioned autobiography." 

Why call this a special depaitment, and speak of it as a haz- 
ardous experiment 1 The specialty consists in describing iiicidenta 
of purely personal interest in language suited to their magnitude 
as they nppear m the eyis of tlie writer ; and the danger is, as we 
have li;id occasion to notice incidentally (p. 59), that readers 1)6 
unsympathetic, and refu.--e to interest themselves in the writer's 
personal feelings. The specialty is umloubtedly considerable, and 
so is the danger. That De Quincey succeeded was shown by the 
popuLirity of his autobiographical works. 

The mere si)lendour of such a style as De Quincey's would, to 
readers prepared to enjoy it, overcome a great amount of distaste- 
fulness in the subject. But apart from the mechanical execution, 
he showed himself sensib'e of the chief danger in the treatment of 
such themes. That danger is, the intrusion of personal vanity. 
"Any expression of personal vanity, intruding upon impassioned 
records, is fatal to their effect, as being incompatible with that 
absorption of spirit and that self-oblivion in which only deep 
passion originates, or can find a geni;d home." If the autobio- 
grapher stejts aside from the record of his feelings to compare 
them with the feelings of other people, and to make out that he 
has been honoured, alilicted, or agitated above other people, every 
reader's self- conceit takes the alarm, and forthwith scans the writer 
with cynical antipathy. De Quincey is on his guard against mak- 
ing such a blunder. He does not, as j\Ir Tennyson sometimes 
does, exhibit his sufferings in comparison with the sufferings of 
other men, and claim for the incidents of his life an affinity with 
the most tragical events incident to frail humanity. He represses 
every suggestion that he regards the events of his life as other 
than commonplace in the eye of an impartial observer. He ia 
intent upon expounding them simply as they affected Inm ; con- 
scious all the time that to other men the events of their life are 
of equal magnitude, and that he must not egotistically challenge 
comparison ; knowing, as .m artist, that any expression of personal 
vanity, any appearance of pluming himself upon his experience, 
is fatal to the effect of the composition. 

We need not till up our liinited space with quotations from a 
book so well known as the Oi>ium Confessions, and now published 
at sixpence. One only will be given, and that as having already 
been alluded to. The reader will notice that our author is 
wholly engrossed with his suffering and his sudden resolution, 
and endeavours only to make his case vividly intelligible; there 
is no trace of boastful comparison with the experience of other 
people :— 



68 THOMAS DE QUINCE\. 

"But now, at last, came over me, from the mere excess of bodily suffering 
and mental disappointments, a frantic and rapturous rea<,'ency In the 
United States the case is well known, and many times has been described 
by travellers, of that furious instinct which, under a secret call for saline 
variations of diet, drives all the tribes of huff iloes fur thousands of miles to 
the common centre of the 'Salt-licks.' Under such a compulsion doi^s tlie 
locust, under such a compulsion does the leeminic, tra^-erse its mysteiious 
path. They are deaf to danger, deaf to the cry of battle, deaf to the trum- 
pets of rleatli. Let the sea cross their path, let armies with artillery bar the 
road, even these terrifii; powers can arrest only by destroying ; and the 
most friglitl'ul abysses, up to the very last menace of engulfnieiit, up to the 
very instant of absorption, have no power to alter or retard tlie line of their 
inexorable advance. 

"Such an instinct it was, such a rafiturous command — even so potent, 
and, alas ! even so blind — that, under tl:e whirl of tumultuous indignation 
and of new-born hope, suddenly transfii;ured my whole being. In the 
twinkling of an eye, I came to an adamantine resokition — not as if issuing 
from any act or any choice of my own, but as if positively received from 
some dark oracular legislation external to myself." 

Patho?, 

From the prevailing majesty of his diction, De Quincey's pathos 
is rarely of a homely order. In some of his papers, as in the 
"Military Nun," there are touching little strokes of half-humorous 
tenderness. But his most characteristic pathos is impassioned 
regret for de|)arted nobleness ; in which case lie bleuds with his 
expressions of sorrow a splendid glorification of the object, so that 
the mind is at once saddened and filled with ideas of sublimity. 

The im[)assioned apostrophes of the Opium Confessions are toler- 
ably well known. We may therefore choose an exami)le from a 
composition less generally known — his paper on " Joan of Arc " : — 

" Wliat is to be thought of her ? "What is to be thought of the p lor shep- 
herd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that — like tlie Ileln'ew 
shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea-ro.se sudilenly out of the 
quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep 
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more peril- 
ous station at the right hand of kings? . , . Pure, innocent, noble- 
hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth 
and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for ihif truth, that 
never mice — no, not for a moment of weakness — ditlst tlmu revel in the vision 
of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee ! Oh no ! Ilonouis, if 
they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of 
Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, tliou wilt be sleep- 
ing the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear 
thee ! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of hontmr, but 
she will be found en contumnce. When the thunders of universal France, 
as even j'et may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of tlie poor shepherd 
girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have 
been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to die, that was thy portion in 
this life ; that was thy destiny ; and not for a moment was it hidden frora 
thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short ; and the sleep which is iu the grave is 



PATHOS— HUMOUR. 69 

lonf;. Let me nse that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly 
dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. Tliis pure creature 
— jiure from every susiiicioti of even a visionary self-interest, even as sh? 
was pure in scni.ses more obvious — never once did this holy chihl, as re- 
garded lierself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelliug to 
meet her. She mi^dit not pretiuure the very manner of her death ; she saw 
not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scatlbld, the sjiectators 
without end on every road pouring iiito Rouen as to a eoi-onation, the surg- 
ing smoke, the volleying flames, tlie hostile faces all around, the ])itying ej'e 
that hirked but here and there, until nature and iui]>erishable truth broke 
loose from artiiicial restraints, — these might not be apjiarent thrnuuth the 
mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, tliat 
ahe heard for ever." 

As an example of a pathetic apostrophe, in a less toucliing but 
still impressive key, take his reminiscence of Edward Irving, from 
one of his unreprinted papers : — 

" He was the only man of our times wlio realised one's idea of Paul preach- 
ing at Athens, or defending himself before King Agrippa. Terrific meteor! 
uuhap|iy son of fervid genius, which mastered thyself even mure than the 
rai)t audieiuies which at one time hung upon thy lips ! were the cup of life 
once again presented to thy lips, wnuhlst thou drink again ? or wouldst thou 
not ratlier turn away from it with sluuhleriiig abomination? Sleep, Hoan- 
erge-^, and let the memory of man settle only upon tiiy colossal powers, 
without a thought of those intellectual aberrations which were more power- 
ful for thy own ruin than for the misleading of others ! " 

Humour. 

Our author's " Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," be- 
longs to a vein of irony peculiarly his own — the humour of bring- 
ing the ideas of Fine Art and ordinary business into ludicnms 
collision with solemn or horrible transactions. An extract or two 
from the beginning of this jiaper will give an idea of its character. 
It is preceded by an " Advertisement of a man morbidly virtuous," 
which begins thus — 

" Most of us who read books, have jirobahly heard of a society for the 
promotion of vice, of the Hell-Fire Club, founded in the last century by Sir 
Francis Dashwood, &c. At Brighton, 1 think it was, that a society was 
■firmed for the suppression of virtue. That society was itself suppressed; 
but I aui sorry to say that another exists in London, of a character still more 
atrocious. Li tendency, it may be denominated a society for the encourage- 
ment of murder ; but, according to their own ilelicate eu(pr]/xicrixhi, it is styled, 
The Society of Conn"isseurs in Murder. They profess to be curious in homi- 
cide ; amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage ; and, in short, 
murder-fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class whicdi tlie police annals 
of Europe bring U[), they meet and criticise as they would a ])icture, statue, 
or other work of art. But I need not trouble myself with any attempt to 
describe the spirit of their proeeedings, as the reader will collect IhcU much 
better from one of the monthly lectures read befoie the society last year. 
This has fallen into my hands accidentally, in spite of all the vigilance 
exercised to keep their transactions f rorfirnT©" ^miLu ic eye." 



70 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

The " morbidly virtuous " advertiser concludes by saying that 
he has not yet heard of the society offering prizes for a well- 
executed murder, but that " undoubtedly thiiir proceedings tend 
to that." The atrocious lecture thus exposed to the eye of the 
public begins as follows : — - 

" GENn'LiUMBN, — I have had the hononr to he appointed by your committee 
to the trying task of reailiug the Williams' Lecture on Murder considered as 
one of the i*'ine Arts, — -a task which might be easy enough tlii-ee or four 
centuries ai;o, wheu the art was little understood, and few great models had 
been exliibited; but in iliis age, when masterpieces of excellence have been 
execu'e 1 by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style of criti- 
cism applied to them, the public will look for something of a corresponding 
improvement. Practice and theory mu.'st advance pari paasu. People begin 
to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than 
two blocklieads to kill and be killed — a knife — a purse — and a dark lane. 
Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now 
deemed indi-<pensable to attempts of this nature. Mr AVilliams has exalted 
the ideal of murder to all of us ; and to me. therefore, in piirticular, has 
deepened the arduousness of my task, liike ^Eschylus or Milton in poetry, 
like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art to a point of colossal 
sublimity ; and, as Mr AVordsworth o'lscrves, has in a manner ' created tlie 
taste by which he is to be enjoyed.' To sketch the history of the art and to 
examine his i)rinciples critically, now remains as a duty for the connoisseur, 
and forjudges of i[uite another stamp from his Majesty's Juslges of Assize." 

The humour is kept up through fifty-seven pages.^ 

The "Williams' Lecture" is the crowning achievement of his 
humour. His works contain many occasional touches, in the same 
vein. He is frequently jocular on the subject of death. Thus — 

" In like mmner, I do by no means deny that some trtiths have been 
delivered to the world in regard to opium : thus, it h;is been repeatedly 
affirmed by the learned that opium is a tawny brown in colour — and this, 
take notice, I grant ; secondl}', that it is rather dear, which also I gnmt — for 
in my time Ea-t India opium has been three guineas a-pound, and Turkey 
eight: and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you 
must do what is disagreeable to any man of regular habits — viz., die." 

Again, alluding to Savage Landor's contumacy at school : — 

" ' Roherte the Dcville :' see the old metrical romance of that name: it 
belongs to the fourteenth century, and was printed some thirty years ago, 
with wood euijravings of the illuminations. Roberte, however, took the 
liberty of murdering his schoolmaster. But could he well ilo less ? Being 
a reigning Duke's sou, and after the rebellious schoolmaster had said — 

' Sir, ye bee too bnlrle : 
And tli'TCwith took a roJde hyin for to chaste.' 

Upon which the meek Robin, without using any bad language as the school- 
master had done, simply took out a long dagger ' liijm for to chaste,' which 
he did effectually. The schoolmaster gave no bad language after that." 

1 The paper occurs in vol. iv. of the Collected Edition. This volume, contain- 
ing also the " Revolt of the Tartars," the "Templar's Dialogues," and the "Vision 
of Sudden Death," aifords good examples of all the qualities of his style. 



HUMOUll — MELODY AND HAIIMOXY. 71 

It must not be supposed that De Quincey's liuinour consists 
solely in this playing with dread ideas, iriis works, as we noticed 
in sketching his character, overfiow with good-natured humour of 
every descriptiim. It is often of that strongly individual kind 
which only intimate sympathisers can tolerate ; strangers call it 
impertinent, flippant, afleeted. Take, for example, one of his 
playful apostrophes to historical names : — 

"Sam Parr ! I love you. I said so once before. But perstringing, which 
was a f.ivoiucil word of your own, w:is a no less favoureil act. You also in 
your lifetime pers'nn^e J many people, some of whom perstringed you, Sam, 
smartly in return." 

"I (said Augustus C.'Esar) found Rome built of brick ; but I left it built 
of marble. Well, my man, we reply, for a won<lrously little chap, you did 
what in Westmoreland they call a good darroch (day's work) ; and if navvies 
had been wanted in those days, you should iiave had our vote to a certainty. 
But Caius Julius, even under such a limitation of the comparison, did a 
thing as much transcending this," kc. 

We must also give a specimen of his humorous " sLingy " out- 
rages on the dignity of criticism. The fnllnwing occurs in his 
" IJrief Appraisal of Greek Literature," wliicli has not been re- 
printed : — 

" But all this extent of o' lig ition amongst later poets of Greece to Homer 
serves less t<> argue his opiilince than their penury. And if, quitting the 
one great Mazing jewel, the Urim and Thummim of the Iliad" [.Vehiiles], 
"you descend to individual passages of poetic effect ; and if amongst these 
a fancy should siize you of asking for a sp.*cimen of the sublime in particular, 
what is it that you are olf'.'i'ed by the critics? Nothing that we remember 
beyond one single jjass.ige, in wldL-h the (iod Neptune is described in a 
Ste'?i)lechase, and ' makii.g play ' at a terrific pace. And certainly enough 
is exhibited of the old boy's hoofs, and their spanking (lualities, to warrant 
our liacking him against a railroad for a rump and dozen ; but, after all, 
there is nothing to grow frisky about, as I.onginns does, wdio gets up ihe 
steam of a blue-stocking enthusi:ism, and boils us a regular galloji of ranting, 
in which, like the conceited snipe upon the Liverpool railroad, he thinks 
himself to run a match with Sampson ; and whilst ail'eeting to admire Homer, 
is niauileslly squinting at the reader to see how far he admires liis own 
flourish of admiration ; and, in the very agony of his frosty raptures, is 
quite at leisure, to look out for a little private traffic of rapture on ids own 
account. But it won't do ; tliis old critical j'osture-mastcr (whom, if Aurelius 
hanged, surely he knew wliat he was about) may as well put up his rapture 
pipes, and (as Lear says) ' not scjuiny ' at us ; for let us ask .Master Lunginus, 
in what eartiily respect do tliese great, strides of Neptune exceed .lark witli 
his seven-lea-^ue boots ? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that 
Jack has the advantage." 

Melody and Harmony, 

The mehidy of De Quincey's prose is pre-eminently rich and 
stately. lie takes rank with Milton as one of our greatest mas- 
ters of stately cadence, as well as of sublime composition. If one 
may trust one's ear for a general im})ression, Milton's melody is 



72 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

sweeter and more varied ; bnt for magnificent effects, at leaBt in 
prose, the palm must probably be assigned to De Quincey. In 
some of De Quincey's grandest passages the language can be com- 
pared only to the swell and crash of an orchestra. 

It need hardly be added that the harmony between his rhythm 
and Ms subject-matter is most striking in the sublime flights. 

Taste. 

De Quincey has been accused of crossing the bounds of good 
taste in certain respects. His digressions and footnotes have been 
objected to. His punctilious precision in the use of terms has been 
called pedantic. He has been censured for carrying to excess what 
we have described as his favourite figure. But especially he has 
been visited with severe condemnation for his offences in the pur- 
suit of comic effect — more particularly in the use of slang. A 
recent critic has gone the length of describing his " slangy" apos- 
trophes as " exquisite foolery." 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Description. 

Though so many of De Quincey's papers are descriptive, and are 
properly designated sketches, he has really left us very little de- 
tailed description of external nature. The reason is to be found 
in his character. His interest was almost wholly engrossed by 
man. The description that he excelled in was description of the 
human form, feelings, and manners. 

Where he does attempt the description of still life, notwithstand- 
ing his natural clearness and order, he is much inferior to Carlyla 
He has one or two good points. He gives right and left in his 
pictures, and brings in such touches of precision as — " standing on 
a different radius of my circular prospect, but at nearly the same 
distance:" — which is very significant, if not too scholastic. But 
if we take even such a studied piece as his description of the valley 
of Easedale, at the beginning of his " Eecollections of the Lakes," 
vol. ii., we miss the vividness of a master of the descriptive art. 
We receive no idea of such a fundamental fact as the size of the 
valley : we are, indeed, presented rather with the feelings and 
reflections of a poetically-minded spectator, than with the material 
aspects of the scene. 

Generally speaking, he describes nature only in its direct or 
figurative relations to man. A scene is interesting as "the very 
same spectacle, unaltered in a single feature, which once at the 
same hour w^as beheld by the legionary Roman from liis embattled 
camp, or by the roving Briton in his ' wolf-skin vest.' " A hamlet 



DESCRIPTION. 73 

of seven cottages clustering together round a lonely highland tarn, 
is interesting as suggesting seclusion from the endless tumults and 
angry i)assions of human society ; the declining light of the after- 
noon, from its association with the perils and dangers of the 
night. Thus it happens that often, instead of describing he 
really expounds — exi)Ounds the thoughts that arise from the 
general features of a scene by force of association or of simili- 
tude. We see this in his description of the English Lake 
scenery : — 

" But more even than Anne RiidclifTe liail the landscape-painters, so many 
and so various, contiibiited to the gloriliiation of tlif English Lake district; 
drawing out and impressing upon the heart the sanctity of repose in its shy 
recesses — its Aljuue grandeur in such passes as those of Wastdalehead, 
Langdalehead, liorrowdale, Kirkstone, Hawsihile, &c., togetlier with the 
monastic peace wliich seems to brood over its jieculiar form of pastoral life, 
60 much nolder (as Wordsworth notices) in its stein simplicity and con- 
tinual conflict witli danger hidden in the vast draperies of mist over.-.liadow- 
ing tlie liills, and amongst tlie atinies of snow and liail arrayed by fierce 
nortliern winters, than the elfi-minate shepherd's life in the classical Arcadia, 
or in the flowery pastures of Sicily." 

An indifferent observer of nature, De Quincey was minute and 
precise in his observation of human beings. Every face that he 
met he seems to have watched with the vigilant attention of a 
Boswell. He has described the persons of many of his contem- 
poraries. His most careful portraits are, perhaps, his Lake com- 
panions — Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and ^Vilson. To these 
must be added his delineation of the notorious murderer Williams. 
The reader that desires to see how watchful an eye he had for the 
smallest particularities of shape, look, and bearing, will do well to 
read his pri'fatory note on Coleridge, vol. xi. 

It is in the description of the feeliuLrs that he particularly excels. 
Not only is he deeply learned in the proper vocabulary of the 
feelings ; he had acquired by close study, and employs with 
exquisite skill, a profound knowledge of the outward manifesta- 
tions of feeling in tone, feature, gesture, and conduct. In reading 
motives from what he would have called the dumb hierogly[)hics 
of observed or recorded behaviour, and in tracing the succession 
of feelings that must have passed under given circumstances, he 
is one of our greatest masters. In this point more perhaps than in 
any other, he challenges the closest attention of the student. 

A good specimen of his jiower is the passage in the Marr 
murder where he pictures Clary's feelings on her returning to 
the door and finding it locked: — 

" Mary rang, and at the same time very gently knocked. She had no 
fear of disturbing lier master or nii>tress ; thrm she made sure of tindiiii; 
still up. Her an.\icty was fur the baby, who, being disturbed, might agaiu 



74 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

rob her mistress of a night's rest ; and she well knew that with three people 
all anxiously nwaitiiig her return, ami by tliis time, perlmp-?, seriously un- 
easy at her deLiy, the least audible whisper from herself would in a moment 
bring one of them to the door. Yet how is this? To lier astonishment- - 
but with the astouislinient came creepirrg over her an icy horror — no stir nor 
niuniiur was heai-d asccU'liiig from the kitchen. At this moment came iiack 
upon lier, with shuddeiing anguish, the indisliiict image ol' the stranger in 
the loose dark coat whom slie hnd seen stealing along under the shadowy 
lampliL;ht, and too certainly watchins,' her master's motions. Keenly she 
now reproached herself that under whatever stress of hurry she iiad not 
acquainted Mr Marr with the suspicious iippenrances. Poor girl! she did 
not then know that, if this communication could have availed to put iMarr 
upon his guard, it had reached him from anotlier quarter ; so tliat her own 
omission, which had in reality arisen under her hurry to execute her master's 
commission, could not be charged with any bad consequences. But all such 
reflectious this way or that were swallowed up at this point in overmastering 
panic. That her double summons could have been unnoticed — this solitary 
fact in one moment made a revelation of horror. One person might have 
fallen asleep, but two — but three — that was a mere impossibility. And even 
supposing all three together with the baby locked in sleep, still how un- 
accountable was this utter, utter silence ! Most naturally at this moment 
something like hysterical horror overshadowed the poor girl ; and now, at 
last, she rang the bell witli the violence that belongs to sickening terror. 
This done, she paused. Self-command enough she still retained, though 
fast and last it was slipjiing away from her, to bethink herself that, if any 
overwhelming accident had compelled lioth Marr and his np]irentice-boy to 
leave the house in order to summon sni-gical aid from o])posite ([uarters — a 
thiu'^ birely supposable— still, even in that case, Mrs ]\Iarr and her infant 
would 1)6 left, and some munnuring reply, under any extremity, would he 
elicited from the poor mother. To pause, therefore, to imi)ose stern silence 
U])on herself, so as to leave room for the possible answer to this final appeal, 
became a duty of spasmodic effort. Listen, therefore, poor trembling heart ; 
listen, and for twenty seconds be as still as death. Still as death she was ; 
and during that dreadful stillriess, when s>'e Imshed her breath that she 
might listen, occurred an incident of killing fear, that to her dying day 
would never cease to renew its echoes in her ear." 

N^arrative. 

De Quincey never attempted any continuous history. Taking 
his own division of history into Narrative, Scenical, and Philo- 
sophical, we see that he had special qualifications for the two 
last modes. But he wanted industry to take up a national history 
and pursue it continuously through all its stages. What he might 
have done we can guess only from speculations recorded incident- 
ally in such papers as his account of the CiBsars, or of Cicero, or 
Charlemagne, and from the spectacular sketch of the Revolt of 
the Tartars. 

He wrote several short biograyihies. In these he has at least 
the negative merit of not chronicling unimportant facts. They 
can hardly be called narratives ; there is in them as little as 
possible of anything that could be called narrative art. They 
are, properly speaking, discussions of perplexities that have 



EXPOSITION. 75 

gathered about the story of the individual life, and descriiitions 
of the various features of the chaiacter. 

In his most imaginative tales, such as the "Spanish Military 
Nun," tlie facts are altoi^ether secondary to the poetical embel- 
lishments — are but the bare cloth on which he works his many- 
coloured tapestry of pathos, humour, and soaring rhapsodies. 

Exposition. 

De Qaincey possessed some of the best qualities of an expositor, 
conpK'd wiih considerable defects. 

The great obstacle to ids success in exposition was the want of 
simi)licity. He was, as we have seen, too persistently scliolastic 
for tlie ordinary reader, making an almost ostentatious use of 
logical forms and scientific technicalities. 

As his studious clearness is marred by an unnecessary use of 
unfamiliar words and forms of expression, so othei's of his merits 
in exposition must be stated with some abatement. 

He was aware of the value of iterating a statement. " A man," 
he says, " who should content himself with a single condensed 
enunciation of a perplexed doctrine, would be a madman an' I a 
felo de ise, as respected his reliance upon that doctrine." Yet he 
considered iteration a departure " from the severities of abstract 
discussion." " In the senate, and for the same reason in a news- 
paper, it is a virtue to reiterate your meaning: tautology becomes 
a merit ; variation of the words, with a su!).stantial identity of the 
sense and ddution of the truth, is oftentimes a necessity." But 
in a book, he held, repetition is rather a blemish, seeing that 
the reader may " return to the past page if anything in the 
present de})ends upon it." In this he was probably unpractical : 
doubtless the reader is saved much weariness by judicious re- 
petition, although of course less is needed in a book than in a 
speech. 

He knew also the value of stating the counter-proposition. In 
upholding the Ilicardian law that the value of a thing is deter- 
mined by the qunntifi/ of the labour that pmduces it, he broadly 
declares that the mere statement nf the doctrine l»rings the student 
not one stc[) nearer the trnth, unless he is told what it is designed 
to contradict — namely, tliat the value of the thing is not deter- 
mined by the va/iie of the i)roducing labour. 

^Vhen he is thoronghly in earnest, and resolved to make an 
abstruse point clear to the meanest capacity, he knows how to 
proceed by means of simple examples and illnstrations. The nns- 
fortune is, that he is not always alive to the abstniseness of the 
qiu'stion he happens to be dealing with, and consequently wears 
to many readers an air of repulsive incomprehensibility. 



76 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

His power of rlotliing a dry subject with interest ap]iears ad- 
vantageously in his " Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy." 
In respect of varied interest, this fragment is equal to the diar 
logues of Plato. 

In consequence chiefly of his abstruseness, he cannot be recom- 
mended as a model to ttie popular expositor. Yet bis command 
of language, his precision, and his power of imparting interest, 
make liim a profitable study if the student knows what to imitate 
and what to avoid. 



CHAPTER IL 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT, 

1800— 1859. 

This most popular of modern prose writers was born on the 25th 
of October 1800, at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, the residence 
of his uncle-in-Iaw and name-father, Thomas Babington. 

His father, Zachary Macaulay, was a man of some note, and was 
judged worthy of a monument in Westminster Abbey. 'Ilie son 
of a Scotch minister in Dumbartonshire, he made a moderate for- 
tune in Jamaica and Sierra Leone, and on his return to England 
in 1799, became a principal supporter of the Society for the Aboli- 
ti(m of Slavery. A dry taciturn man, writing a plain terse style, 
he bore little outward resemblance to his distinguished son ; but 
he had the same untiring powers of work, and the same extraordi- 
nary strength of memory. He edited the newspaper of the Aboli- 
tionists, and was the great master of the statistics employed for 
the agitation of the public mind. The historian's mother, a pupil 
of the sisters of Hannah More, was also a person of talent; to her 
he seems to have owed his buoyant constitution. 

Never, to use his own favourite mode of expression, Avas a child 
brought into this world under circumstances more favourable to 
the development of literary ta'ent. His parents belonged to a 
small sect of earnest and accomplished persons, closely knit to- 
gether by a common object, and zealously devoted to their adopted 
mission. With the earliest dawn of intellii;ence he heard imperial 
policy discnssed at his father's table, and the affairs of the nation 
arranged, not by ideal politicians, but by men actively engaged in 
public business — such men as Henry Thornton, Thomas P.abington, 
and Wilberforce. He saw his father preparing their juintcd organ, 
and at an early age was taught by that encyclopedic statistician 



78 THOMAS BABIXGTOX MACALLAY. 

• 

(^he argumentative value of factSy> There being the closest inter- 
course between the fnniilies of the Claphain stct, a hoy of promis- 
ing abilities met with much attention, and man}' willing instruc- 
tors of his youthful curiosity. Besides, young " Tom," bright and 
loquacious, was an especial favourite with Hannnh More, "the 
high priestess of the brotherhood," and had his fancy quickened 
and his ambition fired by her anecdotes of the literary men of last 
century. 

He was not sent to any of the great public schools. He received 
his earliest instruction at a small school in ("lajiham. " At the 
age of twelve he was placed luider the care of the l»ev. Mr Preston, 
first at Shelford, afterwards near Buntingford, in the neighbour- 
hood of Cambridga" With Mr l^reston he seems to have remained 
until ready to enter the University. 

In his nineteenth year he began residence at Trinity College, 
Cambridge. In after-life he used to mention with regiet that at 
College he spent very Utile time on the j>revailing study of mathe- 
matics ; but classics he prosecuted with such success, that in 1821 
he gained the high distinction of the Craven scholarshi)). A large 
part of his time was given to pursuits not so strictly academic al ; 
he was a distinguished orator at the Union, aud twice carried 
away the Chancellor's medal for English verse — in 1819 for a 
poem on Pomi)eii, and in 182 1 for a poem on Evening. He took 
his degree of B.A. in 1822, and in October 1824 was elected Fellow 
of his College. 

Very soon after taking his degree, and while waiting in College 
for his fellowship, he set himself strenuously to fulfil his ambiti"n 
in literature. His first efibrts were contributed to 'Knight's Quar- 
terly Magazine,' between June 1823 and November 1824. From 
these early productions we can see that he did not work at ran.lom, 
but to some extent pursued definite objects. Thus, in his " Frag- 
ments of a Ki>man Tale," and his " Scenes from Athenian Bevels," 
we can discern a purpose — a purpose that he often recommends as 
the highest aim of the historian, — namely, to realise the private 
life of the bygone generations. Again, from his studies of Dante, 
Pftrarch, Cowley, Milton, and the Athenian orators, we may infer 
that he worked upon the orthoilox plan for literary aspirants, of 
making himself familiar with the leading masters of style in dif- 
ferent languages. Then we have an indication of a meihanical 
plan of Working. His contributions apjiear in pairs — a grave com- 
position coupled with something lighter. If this was not the 
arrangement of the jaiblisher, we ma\' su]>pose that he sought the 
relief of variety, and that from tlie first he worked upon a deliberate 
resolve to excel in all kinds of comp<.^sition. 

In 1S24 he made his first ajipearance as a public speaker. At 
an Abolitionist meeting in Freemasons' Hall, he seconded one of 



LIFE. 79 

the resolutions, and his speech is said to have created some talk 
among outsiders. 

The performance that first brought liim conspicuously into notice 
was his article on Mihon, contiilmted to the 'Eiiiiiburgh Review* 
in August 1S25. He was called to the bar in 1S26 ; but though 
he took chambers in the Temple and joined the Northern Circuit, 
he probably gave little time to legal liusiness, and lie made no 
name as a barrister. It was his literary power that found him 
patronaire. In 1827 he received fmni Lord Lyndluirst a commis- 
sioncrship of bankrupts. And in 1S30, through the inHuence of 
Lonl Lansdowiie, he was returned for the borough of Calne, and 
entered the House of Commons. 

In the Reform debates of 1S31 and 1S32 he was one of the most 
effective speakers. He went strongly and unreservedly with the 
AN'higs. In 1832, as an acknowledgment of his zeal fur Reform, 
he was returned by the newly enfranchised bomugli of Leeds. 
In the same year he was appointed .Secretary to the Board of 
Control. In the first session of the Reformed Parliament he 
spoke against the repeal of the union with Ireland, in favour of 
a bill for removing the civil disabilities of the Jews, and in favour 
of a bill for depriving the East India Company of their exclusive 
trade with China and other commercial privileges. In 1834 he 
was made president of a new law commission for India, and a 
member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. In discharge of the 
duties of these lucrative offices he speut two years and a half in 
India, returning in 1838. 

On his return from India he professed himself anxious to with- 
diaw from politics, and devote his whole time to literature. He 
had not cease i, even when in India, to contribute to the ' Edin- 
burgh Review'; but he wished now to settle down to his great 
project, the 'History of England from the Accession of James II.' 
This could not be. His party could not yet dispense with him. 
He was requested to stand for Edinburgh, and was elected in 1839, 
after very little opposition. 

Re-entering Parliament, he was appointed Secretary at War, and 
retained the office till the fall of the Melbourne .Ministry in 184 1. 
In the general election of 1841 he was re-elected for Edinburgh 
without opposition. On the return of the Whigs to power in 
1S4O, he obtained the office of Paymaster-! ieneral, and a seat in 
the Cabinet of Lord John Russell. Neither in otKce nor in opposi- 
tion was he a silent member. His voice was heard on all questions 
of importance. On all party questions he stood by his party. He 
defended the war with China in 1840, assisted in beating down the 
Chartists, assailed Lord Ellenborouu'h's administration of India, 
supported Lord John Russell's motion for an inquiry into the 
state of Irelan<I, and argued against loading slave-grown sugai 



80 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

with heavy duties. On questions less strictly matters of party, he 
showed liis natural liberality of spirit — supported the increased 
Maynooth Grant and the abolition of Theological Tests in the Scot- 
tish Universities, and resented in very strong language the attempt 
to deprive certain Dissenters of their chapels on the ground that 
they did not hold the opinions of the original possessors. In 1841 
he carried a change in the laws of co])yright. In 1S46 he sup" 
ported an unsuccessful bill for limiting the labour of young persona 
in factories to ten hours a-day. 

In 1S42 he published his ' Lays of Ancient Rome.' Both before 
and after this he wrote occasional verses. Though not quite so pop- 
ular as his prose, his poetry was very widely read. Yet most people 
would gladly forego his Lays for another volume of the History. 

In 1844 he wrote the last of his brilliant essays to the 'Edin- 
burgh Review.' Ambitious of distinction as an orator and a 
statesman, be had never renounced his literary ambition. It was 
chiefly on his writings that he depended for durable fame. Even 
during his official residence in India he found time to write for 
the Review. These periodical contributions were now stopped, not 
because he henceforth threw himself into politics with undivided 
ardour, but because he was setting in earnest to his projected 
History. 

In 1846 he was at tlie height of his political success. In 1847 
came a change. He had ke})t his seat for Edinburgh since 1839. 
He had been re-elected in 1841 without opposition. But of late 
his conduct had been far from satisfactory to the mass of the elec- 
tors. He had given deep offence to churchmen of all sects by the 
breadth of his views. He had spoken in most contemptuous terms 
of the persecution of Sir David Brewster by the Established clergy; 
he had roused the hatred of the Evangelicals by advocating the 
Maynooth Grant, and still more by his derisive mention of the 
"bray" of Exeter Hall, and the "prescriptive right" of its fre- 
quenters "to talk nonsense." In the general election of 1847, 
therefore, he stood third on the poll. This may be considered th« 
end of his political life. He refused to offer himself for another 
seat, and retired to his study and his books. In 1852 the electors 
of Edinburgh returned him at their own expense, unasked, and 
without putting him to the trouble of a canvass ; but he took 
little part in the business of the House. His only memorable 
speech was on the exclusion of the Master of the Rolls from the 
House of Commons, on which occasion he is said to have turned 
the scale by a hundred votes. 

In 1849 appeared the fir.'st two volumes of his History. Very 
few books have been bought with snch avidity. There was a 
demand for the work such as had not been known since the daya 
of Byron and Scott. 



LIFE. 81 

The second two volumes were not published till 1855. Expec- 
tation had been on tijittie, and the rush was almost greater than 
for the first instalment. 

While ca'rying on his History, he turned aside to write for the 
'Encyclopedia Britannica ' some biographies that he had more or 
less crudely sket^ched in Ids 'Essays' — the Lives of "Atterbury" 
(1853), "Buiiyau" (1854), "Goldsmith" (1856), "Johnson" 
(1856), and "Pitt" (1859). These works are highly finished, 
and are considered by many to be the most favourable specimens 
of his style. 

Meantime honours were coming in to crown his labours. In 
1849 ^^ '^^'^s elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, 
and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. The year 1857 
was especially fruitful of such rewards to successful toil. In that 
year he was elected a Foreign Member of the French Academy, 
and of the Prussian Order of IMerit, High Steward of Cam- 
biidge ; and in the autumn he was raised to the peerage as Baron 
Macaulay of Rothley — the first literary man to receive such a 
distinction. 

He did not long enjoy his honours. His multifarious labours 
began to tell upon him. He was threatened with one of the 
maladies that too surely follow upon a life of excitement and 
overstrained energy — derangement of the action of the heart. 
Latterly he was prohiMted from public speaking: at his instal- 
lation as High Steward of Cambridge he simply bowed his ac- 
knowledgments, and made no speech. He had drafted and partly 
written a fifth volume of his History, but did not live to publish 
it. The last composition published during his life was his bio- 
graphy of Pitt. He died at his residence, Holly Lodge, Kensington, 
on the 28th of December 1859. 

We cannot say of ]\Iacaulay himself what he said of Johnson 
— that we are as familiar with his personal ap]iearance as with 
the faces that have surrounded us from childhood. The explana- 
tion probably is, that there was nothing in his appearance to 
draw particular attention. He seems to have been a fair com- 
plexioned, good-looking man, about the middle height, full-bodied, 
and with a tolerably firm carriage. He is described as " robust- 
looking." Crabb Robinson says that his features were regular, 
but that they had not the delicacy one ex[iects to see in men 
of genius and fine sensibility. His voice was strong and com- 
manding, but its effect; was marred by a quick and excited 
articulation. 

He had a vigorous constitution. He was one of the favoured 
few that draw, as De Quincey says, the double prize of a fine 
intellect and a healthy stomach. Had he been more economical 

F 



82 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

of his strength, he might have lived much longer in full exercise 
of his faculties. 

It is often said that a man's powers cannot be fairly valued till 
several generations after his death ; that his contemiioraries and 
their immediate posterity can seldom judge with impartiality. 
Many persons repeat this dictum in something like the aKove 
form without ever asking themselves, What kind of powers do 
we mean ] If power is taken to mean intellectual power as dis- 
played in boiiks, the dictum is probably true. We can jjrobalily 
judge better of the amount of intellect in a book than could have 
been done by the writer's contemporaries. But while posterity 
may give a juster award as respects the intellectual power shown 
in a book, it is much more likely to be unfair in its judgment of 
a man's general energy of intellect. Intellect may be thrown into 
other things than books, and if a man dazzles the judgment of 
his contemporaries, and obtains unmerited praise of his literary 
productions, the reason in all likelihood is that literature is not 
his only field of intellectual display. 

Macaulay's brilliant command of expression, and confident and 
plansible deliverances on every subject of human interest, furnish 
a sufficient explanation of the extraordinary popularity of his 
works. But undoubtedly the popular admiration of the man's 
abilities was heightene 1 by the current traditions of his oratory, 
his powers of conversation, and his astonishing feats of memory. 
Everything combined to convey the impression of amazing ver- 
satility. Now, when his books are calmly judged, and his work 
estimated by special authorities in the various fields that he 
traversed wiih such confidence, there is a danger that we under- 
value his powers, and estimate his whole intellectual force by 
the })art of it that was spent upon his books. If he wished his 
fame to rest upon the quality, and not upon the quantity, of 
his literary productions, he should have chosen a more limited 
field, and not voraciously aspired to be pre-eminent in three such 
departments as poetry, history, and criticism. And if he wished 
his fame to rest upon his literary productions alone, whether in 
their quantity or in their quality, he should not have dissipated 
his energies so profusely in directions that are of little avail for 
permanent literary renown. He aspired to eminence not only as a 
man of letters, but as an orator and as a legislator. Besides all 
this, attested by substantial documents, he sjient, if we may credit 
circulating traditions, an ordinary man's allowance of energy in 
the excitement of conversation, and in the indulgence of an in- 
continent ap[)etite for reading. In conversation he did not give 
and take like De Quincey : once started on a theme, he ran on 
as in a set prelection, without break or pause. As regards his 
reading, the report is that besides what he read for his literary 



CHARACTER. 83 

works, he went through tliousands of novels, kept abreast of the 
ballad literature of the streets, and attempted such freaks as 
reading the bulky volumes of Chrysostom. With all necessary 
allowance for exaggeration, it is evident that his literary per- 
formances are far from representing the whole of his dissipated 
intellectual force. 

Numerous testimonies are on record concerning his extraordinary 
powers of memory. The hyperbolical expression that he forgot 
nothing, while it goes very far beyond the truth, indicates signifi- 
cantly what an impiessinn he made on hia contemporaries. It 
is the kind of exaggeration that makes heroes out of pre-eminent 
men. In his history he often quotes the substance of a document 
instead of giving the exact words ; and the reason was, that he 
often quoted from memory. Several of his essays, involving 
extensive ranges of matter of fact, were written, by his own 
statement, at a distance from books. Concerning Lis conversa- 
tion, we have seveial authentic anecdotes. We learn from the 
historian Prescott that he did not go prepared on a particular 
subject, and watch his opportunity to bring it forward, but 
fluently quoted a piofusion of facts and dates on subjects in- 
troduced by others. Washington Irving relates that, in historical 
combats with Hallam, Macaulay quoted chapter and section as 
if he had had the books before him. Another acquaintance tells 
us that, being on one occasion convicted of a misquotation from 
'Paradise Lost,' he soon after ofiered himself lor examination, 
undertaking to quote any passage suggested to him in the whole 
poem. Moore's Diary contains several expressions of wonder at 
the power of his memory. At one time in particular, says the 
l)oet, "he astonished us by repeating old Irish slang ballads as 
glibly as I used to do when a boy." 

With such a plenitude of sheer retentiveness, lie combined a 
large share of the analogical faculty. He ranged freely through 
the immense store of jiarticulars that he had accumulated, drawing 
parallels, analogies, and figurative comparisons with vivacious 
facility. Assert a proposition in art, politics, social science, in- 
deed in any department of human knowledge, and without a 
moment's hesitation lie would place before you similar propositions 
Irom various auhors, and ho^ts of confirmatory or contradictory 
Jiarticulars. He would then, perhaps, state a view held by himself, 
and support his position by a fertile array of instances, analogies, 
and similitudes. 

These brilliant powers were not without their natural weak- 
nesses. He was so hurried a thinker, he was so enamoured of 
mere movement, that he could not rest to analyse minutely, or to 
make certain that his instances and comparisons were exaitly 
to the point. True, he had strong sense, and with his wide 



84 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

command of facts was not likely to go far astray on practical 
questions. But com|)are him with a calm, meditative, original 
writer like De Quincey, and you become vividly aware of his 
peculiar deficiency, as well as his peculiar strength ; you find a 
more rapid succession of ideas and greater wealth of illustration, 
but you miss the subtle casuistry, the exact and finished simili- 
tudes, and the breaking up of routine views. No original opinion 
requiring patient consideration or delicate analysis is associated 
with the name of Macaulay. It better suited his stirring and 
excitable nature to a]iply his dazzling powers of expression and 
illustration to the opinions of others. He was quick to expose 
false generalisations by producing contradictory instances, and 
he often generalised for himself with the utmost boldness ; but 
none of his original generalisations possess any importance. The 
life of a misunderstood man like Goldsmith is a good test of a 
writer's power of breaking through false traditions. Macaulay's 
Life of Goldsmith repeats many vulgar errors, and contains 
nothing new except the opinion that Goldsmith was not an 
ill-used man, but might have lived comfortably had he been 
provident — an opinion resulting from strong unsentimental sense, 
coupled with a special eye for plain matters of fact. In his 
similitudes and otherwise, he often errs against exact congruity. 
Describing Dante's countenance, he places a " sullen and con- 
temptuous curve" upon the lip, a "haggard and woful stare" 
in the eye — sullenness and contempt upon one feature, and hope- 
less compassion upon another. Expounding the peculiarities of 
Milton's similes, and eiilaiging especially upon " the extreme re- 
moteness of the associations by which he acts upon the reader " 
— an expression, by the way, somewhat vague — he illustrates his 
meaning by saying that the poet "strikes the key-note, and 
exjiects his hearers to make out the melody " — a feat that '' every 
schoolboy" knows to be absurdly impossible, there being hundreds 
of different melodies starting from the same key-note. 

As regards the emotional side of the man. In his writings he 
appears liuoyant and hopeful, an optimist, looking on the bright 
side of things, enthusiastic in his desire of progress, exultingly 
sure of its fulfilment in these latter days, confident in his opinions, 
warm and open in his expressions of like and dislike ; a man 
" radiant," as Carlyle says, " with pepticity," without a trace 
of misgiving, despondency, or sourness. His sympathies go all 
with the vigorous and hopeful side of human nature ; he ignores 
the miseries and ditticulties of this life. He would have us believe 
that human comfort is rapidly on the increase; that we are rapidly 
nearing his millennium, where " employment is always plentiful, 
wages always high, food always cheap, and a large family is con- 



OPINIONS. 85 

sidered not as an encumbrance but as a blessing." " From the 
oppressions of illiterate masters, and the suflerings of a degraded 
peasantry," his mind ahviiys turns with delight to such concep- 
tions as " the vast magniticent cities, the j)orts, the arsenals, the 
villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every 
article of comfort or luxury, the factories swarming with artisans, 
the Apennines covered with rich cultivation up to their very sum- 
mits, the Po wafting the harvests of Louibardy to the granaries 
of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the fnrs of 
Siberia to the palaces of Milan." 

We spoke of De Quincey as a man of ever-active imagination, 
often engaged in transmuting the scenes and characters of his 
daily life into food for his aesthetic sensibilities. There does not 
seem to have been much of this day-dreaming turn in Macaulay. 
His energies were engrossed with actualities, and in his over- 
powering love of movement he hurried eagerly from one thing to 
another, without staying to overlay them with superstructures of 
the imagination. In his study he did not lie dreaming on a rug 
before the fire with a book in his hand, subjeeting every new idea 
to a mental chemistry of analysis and synthesis, and using it as a 
starting-point for speculations of his own, but sat in his chair or 
walked through the room reading, writing, and revising with his 
whole strength. The chief work of his imagination — using the 
word in a loose pojiular sense — was to picture the scenes and 
personages of ancient times and distant countries as they really 
were — the work of what may be called the hi.sti)rical imagination. 
Of aesthetic imagination—- imagination properly so called, imagin- 
ation as a creative or modifying faculty engaged in building up 
objects of Fine Art — he had little share. It was, one may say, 
pushed aside by other mental activities, and what work it did 
was done in a hurry. His warmest admirers cannot claim for him 
a high degree of aesthetic culture. He was too much occupied 
with facts to have time for it. His 'Lays of Ancient Rome' 
are interesting rather historically than aesthetically. They affonl 
us vivid glimpses of Ivoman life and Italian scenery. The inci- 
dents, the ir^ayings, and the doings are of the garish order that 
captivates the inexperienced taste. 

Concerning his Opinions. In practical politics, as we have 
seen, Macaulay adhered to the Whigs ; and generally, in ques- 
tions not identified with party, showed himself a friend to reli- 
gious liberty, and to measures calculated to improve the condition 
of the poorer classes. While he supported the Ileform lUU, he 
was averse to sweeping constitutional changes. The Radical party 
was his especial aversion. 

Theoretical politics he professed to regard with abhorrence. He 



86 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

scoffed at "metaphysical" and "abstract" theories of government, 
and treated with scorn the idea that the lawgiver can derive any 
light from general principles of human nature. Doubtless he was 
prejudiced against political theorists, because the chief theorists in 
his day were Radicals. He himself theorised abundantly upon 
general principles of human nature — as, for example, in his ac- 
count of the Italian States in the essay on Machiavelli ; and he 
theorised under the disadvantage of not knowing that he did 
theorise. 

In his historical verdicts, he is accused of allowing his judgment 
to be warped by party feeling. Perhaps too much has been made 
of this. His attachment to certain ideas was probably stronger 
than his attachment to party. He loved liberty, justice, tolera- 
tion, and the fair fame of England, with the warmth of an ardent 
nature : whoever did violence to these ideas, he hated as if a per- 
sonal enemy. He hated Laud as a bigot, and Charles as a tyrant. 
He admired Cromwell as the destroyer of a tyraimy. He had not 
the heart to denounce Cromwell's usurpation, partly because the 
usurper used his power with moderation, and did not show a nar- 
row partiality for his own sect, but, above all, because during the 
Protectorate the name of England was dreaded and respected on 
the Continent. He was a most ardent patriot; to be patriotic was 
an unfailing passi)ort to his favour : and such as had betrayed their 
country were subjected to a jealous valuation, and let off with 
scant acknowledgment of their virtues, and a thorough exposure 
of their crimi's. 

He has left comparatively little literary criticism, and that little 
is not at all valuable. His deliverance against Pope's " correct- 
ness," in his Essay on Byron, is sometimes quoted. That his 
pungent analogies drive very wide of the mark, the student will 
see by reading the late Mr Coiiington's Essay on Pope, Oxford 
Essays, 1858. 

Though in no sense a man of science, he pronounces with his 
usual confidence on questions of philosophy. He eulogises modern 
science because it does not " disdain the humble office of minister- 
ing to the comforts of mankind." But he sees little good in the 
Inductive Method. It has, he says, " been practised ever since the 
beginning of the world by every human being." He overlooks the 
all-important fact that it has been practised only in simple cases, 
and in those imperfectly, and that its sole pretension is to make 
available for comjilicated problems principles that liave been acted 
upon and estaMished in cases of greater simplicity. The following 
is a sharp criticism from the pen of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a 
determined enemy of superficial knowledge : — 

"I have read Macaulay's article on Lord Bacon in the 'Edinburgh 
Review.' It is written in lii.s usual sparkling, lively, antithetical style, 



SENTENCES. 87 

and the historical part of it is interesting and amusing. His remarks on 
tlie ancient philo.sopliy are lor the most part shallow and ignorant in the 
extreme ; his objectiiins to the utility of lnt;ic are tiie stale eoiiimoii|. laces 
which all the enemies of accurate Icnowledge, and the eulogists of common- 
seuse, practical men, &c., have always been setting forth." 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE 

Vocabulary. 

There is little to remark upon in Macaulay's vocabulary except 
its copiousness. He has no eccentricities of diction like 1 )e Quincey 
or Carlyle ; he employs neither slang nor scholastic technicalities, 
and he never coins a new word. He cannot be said to use an ex- 
cess of Latin words, and he is not a purist in the matter of Saxon. 

His command of expression was proportioned to the extraordi- 
nary compass of his memory. The copiousness appears not so 
much in the Shakspearian form of accumulating synonyms one 
upon another, as in a profuse way of repeating a thought in several 
different sentences. This is especially noticeable in the opening 
jjassages of some of his Essays. In his review of Southey, for 
example, he starts an opinion that the laureate's forte was senti- 
ment rather than reason, and luxuriates as if he never would have 
done with his voluptuous repetitions of the titillating doctrine. 

Sentences. 

Macaulay's is a style that may truly be called " artificial," from 
his excessive use of striking artifices of stylt— balanced sentences, 
abrupt transitions, and pointed figures of speech. 

The peculiarities of the mechanism of his style are exjiressed in 
such general terms as "abrupt," "pointed," "oratorical." We 
shall not attempt to gather together separately all the elements 
that justify these epithets ; but, following the order indicated in 
the Introduction, the various particulars that go to the making of 
the " abruptness" and the " point" will be noticed as we pn.ceed. 

His sentences have the compact finish produced by the frequent 
occurrence of the periodic arrangement. He is not uniformly 
])eriodic ; he often prefers a h)ose structure, and he very rarely 
has recourse to the forced inversions that we find occasionally in 
De Quincey. Yet there is a suflicient iuterspersion of periodic 
arrangements to produce an impression of firmness. Taken as a 
whole, his style is one of the last that we should call loose. 

We here speak of the periodic arrangement or structure as do- 
fined in our Introduction (p. 5). If we take the word periodic in 
its restricted sense, we cannot describe Mac;iulay as a com|)Oser in 
the ]ieriodic style. The "periodic style," in its narrower sense, 
implies long and heavy-hidcn sentences, and Macauhiy's tendency 
is towards the short and licht. 



88 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

Occasionally he uses the long oratorical climactic period, consist- 
ing of a number of clauses in the same ctmstruction gradually in- 
creasing in length so as to form a climax. Thus — 

" The energy of Innocent the Third, tlie zeal of the youn.tr orders of Francis 
and Domiiiir, and tlie fi-rocity of the Crusaders, whom the priesthood let 
loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensiau Churches." 

Again, in a sketch of the Reformation — 

"The study of tlie oncient writers, the rapid development of the powers 
of the modern langinircs the unprecedented activity wliich was dis|d;iyed in 
every department of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the 
Roman Court, the exactions of the Roman Chancery, the jealousy with 
which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally regarded by 
laymen, the ji-alnusy witli which Italian ascendancy was naturally regarded 
by men horn on our side of the Alps — all these things gave to the teachers of 
the new theology an advantage wiiich they perfectly understood how to use." 

In the last example there are two climaxes in sound. 

A large proportion of his sentences contain words and clauses in 
formal balance ; but the effect of this would not be so striking were 
it not that his composition contains so much antithesis in other 
modes. Tlie general predominance of antithesis we shall consider 
in its place under Figures of Speech ; here we have to do properly 
with balanced forms, whether embodying antithesis or not. 

He nmkes considerable use of ct)nventional balanced phrases for 
amplifying the roll of the sentence. Thus — "After full inquiry, 
and impartial reflection ; " " men who have been tried by equally 
strong temiitations, and about whose lives w^e possess equally full 
information;" "no hidden causes to develop, no remote conse- 
quences to predict ; " " very pleasing images of paternal tenderness 
and filial duty ; " and so forth. 

The following is an example of balance without antithesis. It 
is valuable as an artificial mode of giving separate emphasis to 
two things involved in the same argument — a preventive against 
confusion : — 

"Now it does not appear to us to be the first object that people should 
aljrays believe in the establislit-d i-eligion, or be attached to tlie establislied 
goveriinient. A religion may be false. A government may be op]iressive. 
And whatever suppnrc goveiiinients give to false religious, or religion to 
oppressive governments, we con.si ier as a clear evil." 

While this mode of statement has undeniably its advantages, it 
is obviously too startling an artifice to be often employed. The 
two short sentences, interjected without connectives, are examples 
of one element of our author's abruptness. 

The following passages show balance combined with antithesis: — 

"Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues; the 
successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet was it h)n<:» 



PARAGRAPHS. 89 

before tlicir niutnal nnimosity began to abate ; for it is the Jtature of parties to 
retain their ori-inal enmitips far more firmly tliaii tlwir orii,'iiial ])riiici|ili'S. 
During manv yi^ais, a generation of Wliigs, wlioin Siiiney wouiil liavo 
spurned as slaves, eontinued to wage deadly war wiili a generation of Tories 
whom Jetfieys would ha\e hanged for Uepublieans." 

" Witii such feidings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle 
ages. Both readily found what they sought ; and both obstinately refused 
to see anything but wliat they sought. The clianipions of tiie Stuarts cou'd 
easily point out instances of o])]iression exercised on the sulject. Tlie de- 
fenders of the Iioundlieads could as easily produce instances of determined 
and snccessl'ul resistance otlcred to the Crown, 'i'he Tories quoted iiom 
ancient writings ex\>ressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit 
ol' Maiuwaring. The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as 
any that resounded from the judgment-seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers 
adduced numerous instances in which kings had extorted money without the 
authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament 
had resumed to itself the ]iower of inflicting punishment on kings. Those 
who saw only one half of the evidence woidd have concluded that the Plaii- 
tageiiets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey; those who saw only 
the other half would have concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real 
power as the Doges of Venice ; and both conclusions would have beeu 
equally remote from the tiuth." 

It is a pretty general opinion among critics that Macaulay over- 
did this artifice of style. Even his apologist in the ' Edinburgh 
Review ' admitted that his sentences were sometimes '' too curiously 
balanced." As he himself said of Tacitus — " He tells a tine story 
finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimidates till 
stimulants lose their power." The worst of it is that exact balance 
cannot long be kept up, as in the above passage, without a sacrifice 
of strict truth ; both sides are extremely exaggerated to make the 
antithesis more telling. 

I. The striking characteristic of rtirj^p/Me.'s in Macaulay's stjie 
is caused chiefly l)y his peculiar ways of transition and connection. 
He does not conduct us from one statement to another with the 
<leliberate formality of De Quincey. We are seldom left in doubt 
as to the bearing of his statements ; but we are often ke|it in sus- 
pense, and generally we must make out connections for ourselves 
without the help of ex[ilicit phrases. 

Let u.s, for example, study his way of introducing the general 
juoposition italicised in the middle of the following i)assage : — 

"The state of society in the Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of 
tlie Ecclesiastical State, more neaily resembled that wiiich existed in the 
great monarchies of Eurojie. l>ut the governments of Loiiibardy and Tus- 
cany, throuLjh all their revolutions, preserved a different character. A people 
when assembled in a toicn is far mvrcfonnidahlc to its rulers than when d.is- 
perscdovcr a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Cx'^ars found 
it necessary to feed and divert tlie inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at 
the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than once 



90 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most 
hnniiliatiiiEC concessions. The Sultans have often been com[ielled to pro- 
pitiate the furious rabble of Constrintinople with the head of an iin|io|iular 
vizier. From the same cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in tht 
monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Haly." 

The general proposition is introduced abruptly. We are expect- 
ing a statement abnut the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, 
when, with a sudden jerk, the circle of our vision is widened, and 
we are presented with a general comparison between the govern- 
ment natural to cities and the government natural to country 
districts. If we are familiar with the subject, and if our attention 
is fully awake, we at once have a dim perception of the writer's 
drift, and read on till it is distinctly enunciated. But undoubtedly 
the sudden transition has an nbrupt effect. It has not the equable 
smoothness of De Quincey's transitions. The artitice is not unlike 
the common practice of beginning an essay with a statement that 
has no obvious connection with the title. We feel a momentary 
astonishment, and we are put upon our mettle to anticipate the 
application. To be sure, these unapplied generalities have not 
quite so much of an abrupt eti'ect when they come upon us at the 
beginning. At the beginning our attention is supposed to be free. 
Nothing has gone before to preoccupy us except the title. At any 
point in the body of the essay our attention is supposed to be en- 
grossed with the particular sul ject of exposition ; and we start 
when the expected flow of the discourse is suddenly checked, and 
we are jerked upon a new line. 

So much for the abrupt introduction of generalities. Any page 
of Macaulay will furnish the reader with other examples. The 
first sentence of the above passage illustrates another mode of 
abrupt transition. The subject of the paragraph is the government 
of the States of Lombardy and Tuscany ; but the paragraph opens 
with a statement concerning the government of the Neapolitan 
dominions. Instead of laying down directly the state of society in 
Lombardy and Tuscany, he begins with an independent assertion 
about the state of society in the Neapolitan dominions. He has 
been describing Lombardy and Tuscany ; and the reader is expected 
to understand, without any explicit connective, that the assertion 
about the Neapolitan States is meant as a contrast. The effect ia 
very much the same as is produced by the sudden introduction of 
a generality. We presently see the drift of the statement, yet we 
experience a momentary astonishment. This mode of construction 
is much in favour with Macaulay. We are constantly being jerked 
away from the immediate subject, and jerked back with a "but." 
Thus, in a disquisition on the dramatists of the Restoration, he 
suddenly opens a new paragraph with the statement — 

"In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible." 



PARAGRAPHS. 91 

This is not, as wc might suppose, the o])eninL; of a digression on 
the old drama. He is merely taking a step out of the subject that 
he may return with greater force. The next sentence is — 

" But wlioovcr compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with 
those contained in the volume before us, will s'e liow nuu-li tlie pr:i|li,;,';icy 
which follows a pciiod of overstrained austirity goes Ix-youJ the profligacy 
which precedes such a jieiioJ. " 

In the same Essay a paragraph on the morality of Greek writings 
proceeds as follows : — | 

'■The immoral English writers of the seventeenth century are indeed 
much less excusable than lliose of Gieece and Rome. But the worst English 
writings of the seventeenth century are decent, compai-ed with nuich that 
lias been bequeathed to us by Greece and Roiue. Plato, we liave little 
doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etheiege. Bid Plato has 
written things at which Sir George Etherege would liave shuddered." 

The effect of these sudden interruptions of continuity is still 
more abrupt when the contrasting statement is introduced, as it 
were, in fragments. Thus, towards the close of a flowing declama- 
tion on the beneficial influence of the llomam Catholic Church in 
the dark ages, he staggers us by abruptly declaring — 

"The sixtceutli century was comparatively a time of light." 

Of this fragmentary statement we can make nothing. We stumble 
on, bewildered, to the next : — 

"Yet even in tlie sixteenth century a considerable number of those who 
quitted tlie old religion followed the first coniident and plausible guide wlio 
offered himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than they had 
renounced. " 

Now we can guess at his drift, and pass lightly over a sentence of 
examples — 

" Thus Matthias and Knipcrdoling, ajiostles of lust, robbery, and murder, 
were able for a time to rule great cities " — 

reaching the explicit statement of the idea in the following 
sentence : — 

" In a darker age such false propliets might have founded empires ; and 
Christianity miglit have been distorted into a ci'Uel and licentimis supersti- 
tion, more noxious not only than Popery, but even than Islamism." 

Apart from the abruptness of these sudden and discontinuous 
changes of subject, the introduction of generalities, contrasting 
statements, qualifications, and suchlike, before we know formally 
their bearing upim the subject in hand, has .something of the effect 
of the periodic structure upon a larger scale : we are, as in an 
expanded period, kept in suspense until the application is fully 
developed 



92 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

2. The rule of Parallel Com^trudion is that " when several con- 
secutive sentences iterate or illustrate the same idea, they should, 
as far as possible, be formed alike." Macanlay observes this rule 
better perhaps than any of our popular writers. With his natural 
sense of perspicuous effect, he felt the advantage of keeping the 
princi[)a! subject prominent throughout all the sentences of a 
paragraph. 

He is far, indeed, from being perfect. Thus, in the passage 
recently quoted concerning the Italian States, the illustrations of 
the general principle invert the position of the leading subject. 
The general proposition is made concerning the people, and two 
of the illustrations are stated as if the subject of discourse bad 
been the despots and their hardships. Consider, for instance, the 
first illustration : — 

"The most arbitrary of the Caesars foimd it necessary to feed and divert 
the inhaliitants of their unwieldy capital at the exjiense of the provinces." 

Here the phrase "at the expense of the provinces" is imjiroperly 
prominent: who paid the bill is a matter of no importance; the 
point is that the inhabitants of Rome extorted the treat. Let us 
put it as follows : — 

" The inhabitants of the unwieldy capital of the Cajsars exac'ed expensive 
bounties of food and diversion from the most arbitrary of tlieir masters." 

Our amendment may be less elegant, but, in that particular con- 
nection, it is more perspicuous. 

Though open to improvement, Macaulay undoubtedly owes not 
a little of his perspicuity to the observance of this rule. Whole 
paragraphs might be quoted containing little or nothing to alter ; 
particularly when he exerts himself to give a sustained account of 
an institution or an individual — the Roman Catholic Church or 
Hyder AH. When he does not give the leading place to the 
principal subject, he awards it to some subject introduced in his 
peculiar way for purposes of contrast, and for the time occupying 
the foreground in the exposition. 

The uses of parallel structure may be studied to advantage in 
Macaulay. Usually but slight alterations are required, and no 
harm need be done to the variety of his expression. The follow- 
ing is another good case where some slight changes make an 
obvious improvement. The [lassage occurs in an exposition of 
the theme that "No men occupy so splendid a place in history as 
those who have founded monarchies on the ruins of republican 
institutions " : — 

" In nations broken to the cnrb, in nations lonp accustomed to be trans- 
ferred from one tyrant to another, a man without eminent qiialities may 
easily gain supreme power. The defection of a troop of guards, a conspirary 
of eunuchs, a [lopular tumult, mijrht place an indolent senator or a drutal 



PAIUGKAI'HS. 93 

solilipr on thp throne of the Roman woikl. Similar revohitions have often 
oicurreil in the despotic States of Asia. But a community which has heard 
tlie voice of truth and experienced the ])leasures of liberty, in wliich the 
merits of statesmen and of systems are freely canvassed, in whicli oliedicnce 
is paid not to persons but to laws, in which mairistrates are regarded not as 
the lords but as the servants of the public, in wiiich the excitcuiciit of paily 
is a necessary of life, in which political waifare is reduced to a system of 
tactics; such a community is not easily j-educed to servitude." 

The subject being the grandeur of men that have made themselves 
absolute over free institutions, it would obviously conduce to per- 
spicuity to make that subject prominent throughout, as it is in 
the first sentence. The conclusion of the last sentence dro[)S the 
usurper altogether, and lets the pervading idea slip out of clear 
comprehension into vagueness. Let us try tlie effect, as regards 
clearness, of some such alterations as the following : — 

" In the Roman world an indolent senator or a brutal soldier miccht be 
placed on the imperial throne by tlie ({election, &('. ; and siuiil ir rexolutions 
have often occurred in the des[)Otic States of Asia. But in a coniuiuuity, 
&C.; in a community thus free and enlightened, only men of rare genius 
for command can hope to obtain the mastery." 

3. The opening sentence in his paragraphs is not always a clue 
to the main subject. Of this we have had an example. 

One of his great arts of surprise is to occupy the first sentences 
of the paragraph with circumstances leading us to expect the op- 
posite of what is really the main statement. Very often all the 
sentences up to the last are a preparation for the shock of aston- 
ishment administered at the close. We are told what ought to 
have happened, what was expected to happen, or what happened 
in some other age or country under similar circumstances, before 
we reach the gist of the paragraph, which is to tell us what really 
happened in some particular case. The following paragraph is 
constructed on this plan : — 

" No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by the 
Reformeis than the honour ]iaid to celibacy. They held that the doctrine 
of Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned liy the apostle 
Paul as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the crimes and scan- 
dals which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation. Luther 
had evinced his own opinion in the clearest m. inner, by espousing a nun. 
Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had <iieil by fire during 
the reicjn of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however, it bej^an to 
be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared in the Church of 
Eufihuid ; that there was in higli quarters a piejudice against married priests ; 
that even laymen, who called themselves Protestants, had made resolutions 
of celibacy which almost amounted to vows; nay, that a minister of the 
established religion had set up a nunnery, in which the psalms were chanted 
at midnight by a company of virgins dedicated to God." 

Tn such paragraphs, to indicate tlie drift at the beginning would 
alter the character of the composition. Dut in many cases the 



94 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

delay of the main proposition is purposeless, and serves only to 
confuse. Thus, in a paragraph detailing the circumstances that 
made it impossible to transfer to the King of England the eccle- 
siastical supremacy of the Pope, he begins — 

"The imnieiliate effect of the Reformation in England was hj no means 
favonr;il)le to political lihcrtv. The authority wliicli hiul been exercised by 
the Popes was transferred almost entire to the King. Two formidaide ]iowers 
which Jiad often served to check each other were united in a sin.'de despot. 
h the system on which the founders of the Chundi of Enirland acted could 
liave been permanent, the Reformation would have been in a political sense 
the greatest curse that ever fell on our country. But that system carried 
■Aithin it the seeds of its own death." (And so on through a long para- 
gra,».].) 

We do not catch the drift of the paragraph until we reach the 
fourth sentence, and we do not know that it is the key to the sub- 
ject till we have read the whole. An ordinary reader, asked to 
summarise such a paragraph after a single perusal, would give but 
a po(ja' accoufit of it. He would naturally recall the first sentences, 
and comparing these with the tenor of the latter part of the para- 
graph, would almost to a certainty fotmder in the attempt to recon- 
cile them. It would have been far better to begin with the fourth 
sentence. This, though not a direct statement of the substance of 
the paragraph, states it by implication. The three first sentences 
should be thrown into their natural position of subordination. We 
should then have some such opening as follows : — 

"If the system on which the founders of the Church of England acted 
could have been permanent, the Reformation would have been in a political 
sense the greulest curse that ever fell ou our country. At first, indeed, it 
seemed by no means favourable to political liberty. Tlie authority exercised 
by the Popes was transferred almost entire to the King. Two formidable 
powers that had often served to check each other were united in a single 
despot. But this union could not last ; the appearance of danger soon 
vanished." 

His paragraphs often begin with one or more short sentences, 
recapitulating the previous [)aragrapli. It is a good deal a matter 
of taste; but probably most autliorities would prefer that these 
short .sentences were prefixe 1 to the re;d substance of the paragraph 
in the form of clauses. Thus, take his account of the reaction of 
public feeling after the warm reception of William and Mary : — 

"The ill-humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed 
by the most heedless ; for the clergy and the army were distinguiidied by 
obvious peculiaii;ies of garli. 'Black coats and red coats,' said a vehement 
"Whig in the House of Commons, 'are the curs<^s of the nation.' But the 
discontent was not contined to the black coats and the red coats." 

Now the discontent among the other classes being the subject of 
the paragraph, many would prefer to have all the above condensed 
into one sentence, in some sueh way as follows : — 



PARAGRAPHS. 95 

" AlthoTicrli tlic ill-liununir of tlie clergy and the army could not fnil to be 
most leniaiko'i, di^tiligllislll■d as they were fnun other rjassi-s by their pccu- 
liar garb ('black coats and red coats,' said a vehement Wiiig in the House 
of Commons, 'are the curses of the natiou '), yet the clergy and the army 
were not the only discontented classes. " 

4. Dttilncntinn. — In delineating a character, or in giving an 
account of a town, he would not seem to have bestowed much 
attention on the order of the circumstances in his statement. 

'i'o take an example from the celebrated third chapter of his 
Histmy : — 

"Norwich was the cnpital of a large and fruitful province. It was the 
residence of a hi-hop anil of a chapter. It was the chief seat of the chief 
manulacture ot the reahn. Some men distinguished by learning and 
science had recently dwelt there ; and no place in tlie kingdom, e.\ce|it the 
capital and the universities, had more attr.ictions for tlie curious. The 
lilirary, tlie mnsenin, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Tiiomas 
Browne, was thought by the Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a 
long [lilgrimage. Norwich had also a court in miniature." 

(Here follows a picturesque account of the mansion of the Dukes 
of Norwich; their state — the golden goblets, silver tong.s and 
shc.vt'ls, jiaintings, gems; a picturesque description of the festive 
reception of Charles II. in 1671 ; a similar description of the re- 
turn of the Duke of Norwich. After this the paragraph closes 
abruptly with the statement — ) 

"III the year 1693, the population of Norwich was found, by actual enu- 
meration, to be between twenty -eight and twenty-nine thousand souls." 

Now here the statement that Norwich was the chief seat of the 
chief manufacture of the realm deserved to be made more promi- 
nent. Further, there is some confusion in thrusting it in between 
the bishop and the literary celebrities ; it has more natural affinity 
with the largeness and fruitf illness of the i>rovince, and, if it is use- 
ful to preserve continuity of ideas, should have been placed next 
to the first sentence. The ninnber of the population ccmies in very 
abrujitly: seeing that he makes the population his fir.st care in this 
(■lia[)ter, and maintains it to be the most important fact, one is sur- 
prised that he did not observe on the small scale what he considered 
advisable on the great scala 

The paragrajihs of this same third chapter are a very good study 
upon this point of arrangement, and atibrd scope for a great deal of 
casuistry. If we take the cha[)ter as a whole, the order and pro- 
])ortion of the statements are open to many objections. It may, 
indeed, be doubted whether there is in the chapter any principle 
either of order or of proportion. One statement seems to suggest 
another ; at the end the reader feels that he has passed through a 
brilliant muddle; whether he has obtained the complete Pisuah ' 



96 TIIO.MAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

view promised liim at tlie beginning, he cannot say ; he is only 
sure that he has been highly entertained. 

5. Unity. — His natural clearness taught him the propriety 01 
confining each paragraph to a single subject. He is, however, 
open to consideraMe improvement, as students will huve no ditB- 
culty in seeing when they take him rigidly to task. 

As regards irrelevant digressions, he is singularly correct. He 
is one of our most consecutive writers — perhaps among writers of 
popular literature the most consecutive. This makes him a most 
profitable study for the distribution of matter into ])aragraphs : 
the general run of his composition being consecutive, slight altera- 
tions bring him into conformity with the most rigid rules. 

6. Some of the peculiarities already commented on involve a 
breach of the sixth rule of the ])aragraph — namely, that subordinate 
statements should he kept in their 'proper place. 

His trick of taking an explanatory statement out of the sentence, 
and stating it by itself as an independent fact, is a blemish of 
this kind. The abrupt defect is due to its unex[)ected and un lue 
prominence. 

His short sentences often err against the same canon. A number 
of examples that should be comprised in one sentence receive a 
sentence each. A statement is repeated in two parts, and each 
part is htmoured with a se()arate sentence. 

These transgressions are seldom of a kind to cause confusion, 
and many people who like to be startled by such rattling fireworks 
will think the breach of th6 rule more admirable than the observ- 
ance. The student must ju Ige for himself, and be fully persuaded 
in his own mind. If he take a paragraph of Macaulay's, he will 
find that by slight changes, sometimes by a change of punctuation, 
he can mo lerate the abrupt statements into their fitting harmony 
with tlie main theme ; let him return to the passage after a time, 
compare his own versitm with the original, and judge as impar- 
tially as he can which of the two has the most pleasing effect. 

A wider consideraticm might be raised under this heail. Does 
not Macaulay, in tlie exuberance of his powers of language and 
illustration, sometimes dwell longer than iiecessary on a simple 
topic 1 Doubtless lie does illuminate withisupert^ous jirofj^ision 
subjects that stand in no great need of illumination. The fluent 
abundance of examples and comparisons, while it puts his meaning 
beyond doubt, is often greater than the subject demands. Instance 
is piled upon instance and coniparisim U[)on comparison, where a 
bare statement would be enough to make the meaning clear to the 
smallest capacity. For example, in his Essay on Addison, he takes 
occasion to controvert Dr J(>hns(m's account of Boileau's views 
concerning modern Latin. Eoileau, he says, had not an " in- 
julicious contempt for niodern Latin;" he only "thought it prob 



FIGURES OF SrEECII. 97 

able tliat in the best modem Latin a writer of th^! Au^uslaii a.L't; 
would detect ludicrous iniprnprieties ; " ;ind lie w.is quite ri<:lr in 
thinking so. This, one would think, is toleralily clear without 
farther expansion. But j\Iacau!ay goes on to cite no less than 
three parallel cases of the dilHcuIty of mastering a foreign idiom. 

"Wliat modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees tlie smallust 
imimrity in the style ot Livy ? Yet is it not ceitniii that in tlie style of 
Li\y, I'ollic), whose taste luul been formed on tiie banks of the Tiber, de- 
tected the inelegant iilioni of the Po ? Has any mcxhrn scholar undcrstnod 
Latin better tlian Frederic the Great nndcrstood French? Yer is it not 
notorions that Frederic tlie Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, 
and nothing bnt French, (hiring moie than half a centniy, alter niileaming 
liis mother tongue in order to leain French, after living familiarly (hiring 
many years with French associates, could not, to the last, ciim]io.-ie in Frend), 
without imminent risk of cominitiing snme mistake which would have 
moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ? " 

In like manner, the works of Scott and Eohertsou contain Scot- 
ticisms "at which a London apjirentice w.mld laugh." 

This excess of particularity is an error on the right side for 
popular succe.ss. The multiplication of instances may be over- 
done ; but if the language is fresh and varied, general readers will 
take a good deal before they complain of a surfeit. The language, 
however, inust be fresh and varied; of this condition a writer 
should make sure before trying to imitate Macaulay. 

If the student wishes to conform his style to the general judg- 
ment of critics, he must not imitate Macaulay ton ab.-;olutely ; he 
must endeavour to be more varied in the forms of his sentences, to 
aim less frequently at contrasts, to study more carefully the 
jilacing of important Avords, and, above all, to make a more 
moderate use of abrupt transitions. 

Figures of Speech, 

" Splenfloiir of Imagery." — The eidogists of Macaulay's style 
rarely fail to include among its beauties givat "splendour of 
imagery." Now, if under " imagery " may be included compari- 
sons and contrasts of every descripticm, as well as every kind of 
picturesque circumstances, he is no doubt fully entitled to the 
phrase. But if imagery means no more than pictorial similitudes, 
then, compared with such writers as Carlyle and Burke, he cannot 
be called a master of splendid imagery. 

In his earlier essays, he shows an obvious straining after in- 
genious conceits. His E.ssay on Milton is, as he said himself in 
later years, "overloaded with gaudy and ungiaceful ornament." 
In essays written before he was thirty, there are pr.'hably twice as 
many similes a^ in all his subsequent writings. His "Milton" 

G 



98 THOMAS BABINGTON iMACi^.ULAY. 

contains as many as any six of his Liter essays. The History is 
studiously plain, so far at least as le.Lrards figurative ornament. 

Unddubteiliy, his similitudes are often l)ri I liantly ingenious, and 
expressed with his usual richness and felicity of language. But 
they are too artificial and gaudy finery to be worthy of serious 
iniitiition. 

Heal Comparisons. — Out of the resources of his prodigious 
memory, j\Iacaul;iy was able to elucidate a point much more 
vivi lly than by figurative comparisons. Whatever he undertakes 
to depict, whether persons, places, or things, he is able to comjiare 
them at all points with other objects of the same kind ; he is able 
to make whut are technically calied "real comparisons" ; and thus 
conveys a livelier impression of their salient attributes than if he 
compared them with objects having less in common. It is need- 
less to multiply exam|)les of what may be found in almost every 
jiage. We take as specimens four from the first few jjages of his 
History : — 

" HeiiL'ist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Monlred, are 
niytiiical [lersoMs, wliose very existence may he questioneil, and whose ad- 
ventures must be clashed with those of Hercules and RnniuUis. " 

"What tlie Olympian clinriot-course and the P\ tiii^n or:i('le were to all 
the Greek cities, tVom Trebi/ond to Marseilles, Koine and her bishop were to 
all Christians of the Latin (-ommunion, from Calabria to the Hebrides." 

"The same atrocities which had attended the victory of ti:e Saxon over 
the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, sutlered by tlie Saxon at the hand 
of the Dane." 

"The Court of Rouen seems to have been to the Court of Edward the 
Confessor what the Court of Versailles long afterwards was to the Court of 
Charles the Second. " 

Perhaps the most forcible of his comparisons are those intended 
to reverse a common prejud ce, or drive home an unfamiliar view. 
Thus, in the beginning of his History, he falls foul of English 
historians for expatiating with exultation on the power and splen- 
dour of our French kings : — 

"This," lie says, "is as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our 
time to dwell with national pi'ide on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth, 
and to s})eak of Pilenheim and Ilainilies with patriotic regret and shame. 
One of tlie ablest among them, indeeil, attempted to win the hearts 
of his English subjects by espnnsing an Englisii princess. But by many ot 
his barons tliis mmriage was regarded as a mairiagc between a white planter 
and a (piadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia." 

So, to illustrate how completely the popular element had been sub- 
verted in the monarchies of the Continent, he says — 

"The privileges of the States-General, of the States of Brittany, of the 
States of Burgundy, are now matters of as little juactical importance us the 
constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of tlie Amphictyouic Council." 

Very often the comp irisons are made in an abbreviated form, 



FICURKS OF SrKKCH. OU 

like the figure of synecdoche, in which an individual stands as the 
type of a species. Thus — 

"Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food wero as wretchod as those of 
the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more tlian tlie delii-aev of 
Vida, and made di.-coveiius in science wliicli would have ad<liil to the renown 
of Galileo. Ireland could boast of uo Buchanan or Nap.er. " 

In like manner, but, to speak technically, with more of the 
genuine Anfonomcisia, he says that h;id Bacon given to Literature 
the time that he gave to Law and Politics, "he Mould have been 
nut only the A/oses but the Joshua of philosnjihy." William could 
have gained the cordial sui)port of the Whigs only "by becom- 
ing the most factious man in his kingdom, a SkaftesbuvT/ on the 
throne." 

Further, the greater number of his comparisons are not allega- 
tions of similarity. The characteristic Macaulayan comparison is 
more a contrast than a parallel — is, indeed, the form of secondary 
contrast specified as the contrast between the individual members 
of a comprehensive class. Thus, take poets : he seems to have 
poets and their productions ranged on a .sca'e of merit ; and when 
a particular poet or production comes up, he plices them above 
or below some other, or between some two. Madiiavelli's " Mau- 
dragola is superior to the best of Goldoni, and inferior only to the 
best of Moliere." Byron's letters from Italy "are less afleited 
than those of Pope and Walpole ; they have more matter in them 
than those of Cowper." Addison's Epistle to Lord Halifax "con- 
tains passages as good as the second-rate passages of Pope, and 
would have added to the rejiutation of Parnell or Prior." Again, 
" We need not hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some 
compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic 
]ioems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as superficial as Dr 
]51air's, and a tragedy not very nmch better than Dr Johnson's." 
What he does with poets, he does in a greater or less degree with 
statesmen, generals, and all sorts and conditions of men that cross 
his narratives. 

Fifjures of Contrast. — We have already noticed incidentally our 
author's lavish use of antithesis. The contrasts are really tnore 
nun)erous than might be thought at tir>t glance ; the bare frame- 
work is so oveilaid and disguised by the extraordinary fulness of 
expression that many of them escape notice. When we look nar- 
rowly, we see that there is a constant play of antithesis. Not only 
is word set off against word, clause agdnst clause, and sentence 
against sentence. There are contrasts on a more extensive scale; 
one group of sentences answers to another, and ])aragra|ths are 
balanced against paragrajjlis. His pages are illuminat'id not only 
by little sparks of antithesis, but by broad Hashes. 



100 THOMAS BABLNTtTON macaulay. 

EriouL;li lia^ been given in illustration of the minuter play of 
antithesis. Pupils in composition may be exercisi'd in referring 
examples to the various modes of anitliesis, extreme and second- 
ary. Here it may not be su[)erfluous to dwell at some length upon 
a few of our autlior's more prominent ways of manufacturing this 
stage-lightning in its am})ler forms. 

He deals very lari^^ely in what is technically known as obverse 
statement; and gives it a ])eculiar abrupt point by denying the 
neuative before affirming the positive. In explaining his abrupt 
transitions wp called attention to something of this nature : Ave 
remarked on one example (p. 90), that before affirming that a 
certain form of government prevailed in one tract of country, he 
affirmed that it did not prevail in another. As another example, 
take the following passage from a disquisition on the style of 
Johnson : — 

"Miinnerism is pnnlonab'e, and is sometinr's even agreeable, when the 
manner, though vicious, is natural. Few rea'lers, for exan)j)le, would be 
wiilius; to part witli the mannerism of Milton or ot Burke. But a manner- 
ism whiv^h does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on 
princii>le, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always 
offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson." 

There is a go^d deal of antithetic pungency in thus taking the 
obverse first. We expect, from the general tone of his remarks, 
that he )neans to condemn the mannerism of Johnson, and we start 
with surprise when he abruptly declares that "mannerism is par- 
donable." "What!" fla-hes across our mind, "Johnson's man- 
nerism ? " We eagerly read on, and are pleasingly reassured when 
we see the qualification — "when the manner, though vicious, is 
natural." Nor is this the only startle we receive in the course of 
the short paragraph ; there is another shock in reserve to keep our 
attention awake. We have been called away from some minute 
particulars about Johnson to this general principle, and the illus- 
tration of it from remote quarters. At the end of the paragraph 
we are brought abruptly back to Johnsim — " And such is the man- 
nerism of Johnson." jNIany writers would have executed neither 
of these brilliant turns. Many would have begun by saying that 
the mannerism of Johnson is unpardonable, and would then have • 
proceeded to state why it is so, and then, perhaps, by way of coun- 
ter-illustration, would have explained when mannerism is pardon- 
able. Macaulay's order of statement would thus have been in- 
verted, and the contrast, brought in by an equable transition, 
woul 1 have produced a much less flashing effect. 

A favourite and characteristic way of getting up an antithesis 
is, before narrating an event, to recount all the circumstances that 
concurred to make it different from what it ultimately proved to 
be. Thus, before narrating Frederick the Great's breach of faitb 



FIGURES OF SPEECH. 101 

with Maria Theresa, he describes the Pragmatic Sanction, and di- 
lates upon the considerations weighing with the various European 
Cjovernnients to make them observe what they had stipulated. In 
like manner, he contrasts the general expectation before an event 
with the event itself. A good example of this is his account of 
the disbanding of Cromwell's veterans : — 

"The troo])s were now to be disbanded. Fifty tliousand men, accustomed 
to tlie profession of arms, were at once thrown on tiie world ; and e^i)erience 
seemed to wnrrant the belief that this (dian;,'e would iiroduce much misery 
ami criuie, tliat the discharL,'ed veterans would be seen l)e;.'i;in<( in every 
street, or would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no sudi result fol- 
lowed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicatin.i^ that the 
most formidable army iu the world had just been absorbed into ilie mass of 
the community. The l.'oyalists themselves confe^sed that in every depart- 
niHiit of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyon<l other 
men ; that none was chargi-d with any theft or robbery ; tliat none was heard 
to ask an alms; and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted 
notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all 2)robabiliiy one of Oliver's 
old soldiers." 

Another favourite device is in the course of his narrative to 
speculate what might have happened had the circumstances been 
different. He does this at every turning-point in English history. 
The struggle between Crown and Parliament might have come on 
early in the reign of Elizabeth, had not intestine quarrels been 
suspended in the face of a common danger. Had the administra- 
tion of James been able and splendid, the Pailiament might have 
been sujipressed, and the Crown become absnlute. In like manner, 
upon the execution of Charles L, the fall of Richard Cromwell, the 
I'estoiation, and the Revolution, h* pauses to imagine what might 
have been the course of events had they been directed by men of 
different character. The same vein of reflection is continually 
cropping up in all his narratives. 

Everywhere in his writings we can trace the dominating love of 
antithesis. His "celebrated third chapter" sustains the excite- 
ment of paradox through more than a hundred pages. In his His- 
tory the conflict of opposing parties affords him constant opportu- 
nities. What the one party thought of a jmrticular measure is set 
off against what the other party thought ; " the temper of the 
Whi,'^s" is contrasted with the "temper of the Tories." We are 
kept in the seat of judgment till we have heard the historian plead 
first on the one side, and then, still more convincingly, on the 
other. 

In the delineation of characters he finds greater scope for his 
favourite effect. In these pictures, the scintillations of antithesis 
are almost incessant. 

Antithesis is such an undeniable advantage in the statement of 
a fact, as a means of awakening us to its full imi)()rt, that it is hxrd 



102 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

to say in any particular case that ]\racaulay was at fault in usini,' 
an antithetic form of statement. That he was not too pointed for 
the mass of readers was shown by their eagerness in running after 
his productions. That he was too abrupt and startling for refined 
judges of composition is no less apparent by the unanimity of their 
condemnation. We have seen what the 'Edinburgh Review' said 
about the "too curious balance" of his sentences: the same ])re- 
sumably partial authority allows that he employed " unnecessary 
antithesis to express very simple propositions." 

The great objection to the frequent use of antithesis, as already 
observed, is the danger of its betraying a writer into exaggerations, 
into deepening the shadow and raising the light. It is not denied 
that Macaulay has a tendency to make slight sacrifices of truth to 
antithesis. The chapter on the state of society in 16S5 has been 
convicted of many exaggerated statements by less dazzling anti- 
quarians. In liis numerous comparisons between different men, he 
unqnestionabl}' tampers with the realities for the sake of enhancing 
the effect. He exaggerates the melancholy of Dante's character on 
the one hand, and the cheerfulness of Milton's on the other ; he 
puts too strongly the purely illustrative character of Dante's similes 
in contradistinction to the purely poetic or ornamental character of 
Milton's. So he probably overstates the shallowness and flippancy 
of Montesquieu, to heighten by contrast the solidity and stateliness 
of Machiavelli. 

He seems to have been aware of his turn for exaggeration, and 
provides an excuse for it. A slightly over-coloured statement rouses 
lethargy, and does not leave ujion the mind a false impression. The 
hurried reader remembers but faintly. The impression carried away 
from an exaggeiated statement is jjrobably nearer the truth than if 
the statement had been literally exact. 

Such doctrine is, to say the least of it, dangerous. There is, 
however, one case where antithetic exaggeration may be useful. A 
skilful writing-master, when dealing with pupils that have a ten- 
dency to write a cramped hand, trains them to a more flowing pen- 
manship by giving them liberty to make extravagant flourishes, 
and by encouraging them to exaggerate the final limlis of their ms 
and ns. On the same principle, a teacher of compo^tion, dealing 
with tame pupils, may train them to a bolder movement by allow- 
ing them to exaggerate freely for purposes of antithesis. 

A'pigram. — ]\Iacaulay delights in ej)igrams. There is a dash of 
epigram in his unexpected transitions. His antithesis often takes 
an epigrammatic point. The arts of surjirise being so predominant 
in his style, we may quote a few specimens of this the most piquant 
of those arts : — 

" Cranmer could vindicate himself from the cliarge of being a heretic ouly 
by arguments which made him out to be a murderer." 



F1C;URES OF SPEECH. 103 

V^/'Tiiey valued a inavcr or a ccn-Jiinny, not on account of the comfort 
which it conveyed to tlieinselvos, Kut on account of tlie vexation wliii ii it 
gave to the Hoiiudiicads ; and were so far from beinj; disposed to j)urcliase 
union by concession, that tliey objecled to concession, chietly because it 
tended to produce union." 

" One thing, and one tliin.t,' only, could inakeChailes dangerous — a violent 
dcalh. . . . His subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they 
had hated his person ; and posttiiiy has estimated his character from hif 
death rather than from his life." 

"The great ruling principle of his [Robert Walpole's] pulilic conduct was 
indeed a love oi peace, but n^'t in the sense in whieli Arclideacon Coxe uses 
the phrase. The jicace which M'alpnle sou.^ht was not the peace of the coun- 
try, but the peace of his own administraiion." 

" There can be no greater erior than to imagine that the device of meeting 
the exig<-ncies of tlie State by loans was imjioi ted into our Island by 'William 
the Third. From a period of immemorial antiquity it had been the piactice 
ol every P'nglish Government to contract debts. \Vliat the Kevolutiou in- 
troduced was the juactice ot honestly paying them." 

"The town of Bedford juobably contained more than one politician who, 
after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of 
the saints, connived to kee]) what he had got by persecuting the saints dur- 
ing tlie rei<;n of the struni]K'ts ; and more than one jiriest who, duiing re- 
peated changes in the iliscipline and doctrines of the Church, had remained 
constant to nothing but the benelice. " 

"The Puritan hated bear-baitinir, not because it gave pain to the bear, 
but because it gave ])leasiue to llie spectators. Indeed he generally con- 
trived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting both spectators and 
bear, " 

The art of the following is essentially epigrammatic. The 
piquancy arises from the unexpected deliverance of such incon- 
gruities in the same sentence : — 

"They therefore gave the command to Lord Galway, an experienced 
veteran, a man who was in war what Molidre's doctors were in mctlicine, 
who thouglit it much moi-e honourable to fail according to rule, tiiaii to 
succeed by innovation, and who would have been very much ashamed of 
himself if he had taken Monjuich by means so strange as those which 
Peterborough emi)loyed. This great commander conducted the campaign 
of 1707 in the most siientitic manner. On tiie jdain of Almaiiza he en- 
countered the army of the l>ourbons. He drciv vp his traojis accurdinr/ to 
the mcihi'ds prescribed by (he best urilers, and in a fnv hours lost ei'jhteen 
thousand men, a liundred and twenty standards, all his bagyaye, and all his 
artillery." 

Climax. — A rhetorician of so decided a turn as Macaulay could 
not fail to use the rhetorician's greatest ait. In every paragraph 
that rises above the ordinary level of feeling, we are conscious of 
being led on to a crowning den)onstration. 

His arts of contrast already exemplified have the effect of 
making a climax. See particularly the quotations at pp. 93, 
loi. He seems to pause in the course of his narrative or his 



104 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

argument, and go back for a race that will carry him sweepingly 
over the next obstacle. As another example of this climactic use 
of contrast, take the following about Burke. He is comparing 
Bacon and Burke as two men whose later writings are more 
ornamented than their earlier : — 

"In his youth he wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and 
cascades, by tlie m:ister|iiec'es of painting and srulpture, by the faces aiid 
necks of beautiful women, in the style ot a parliamentary report. In his 
old age he disi:a.ssed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant 
language of romance. It is strange that the ' Essay on tlie Sublime and 
Beautitul,' and the ' Letter to a Noble Lord' .should be the productions of 
one man. But it is far more strange that the essay should have been a 
production of his youth and the letter of his old age." 

In stating, as his m.anner is, the various motives that impel 
different paities at particular conjunctures, he is careful to re- 
serve the most telling for the end, and artfully prepares the 
way for the final resolution. 

One of his most studied attempts at climax is the famous 
passage about Charles in the Essay on Milton. 

The only other Figure of Speech that is a marked ingredient in 
Macaulay's .style is Hyperbole. An exaggerated turn of expression 
is one of the main elements of his animated manner : it will be 
fully discussed under the quality of Strength. 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. 

Macaulay's composition is as far from being abstruse as printed 
matter can well be. One can trace in his writing a constant effort 
to make himself intelligible to the meanest capacity. He loves to 
dazzle and to argue, but above everything he is anxious to be 
understood. His ideal evidently is to turn a subject over on 
every side, to place it in all lights, and to address himself to 
every variety of prejudice and preoccupation in his audience. 

Yet his simplicity is very different from the simplicity of such 
writers as Goldsmith and Paley. His is far from being a homely 
style. He does not studiously affect Saxon terms. Without 
being so scholastic and technical as De Quincey, he is not scrup- 
ulous about using words of Latin origin, and admits many terms 
that Dean Alford would have excluded from "the Queen's Eng- 
lish." Besides, although he were an Anglo-Saxon Pharisee in hi.s 
choice of words, his turns of expression are not simple in the sense 
of being familial' and easy. His balanced sentences, abrupt tran- 
sitions, pointed antitheses, and climactic arrangement, elevate him 



SIMPLICITY. 1 05 

out of the ranks of homely authors, and constitute him, as we have 
said, pre-eminently artiticial. 

What is it, then, that makes him so easily understood 1 For 
one thing, he seldom meddles with abstruse problems. He does 
not, like De Quincey, delight to match his ingenuity against 
difficulties; he does not choose a subject because it has baffled 
everybody else : his pleasure is to do brilliantly what everybody 
can do in a manner. De Quincey wrote upon Pope and Shak- 
speare because jierplexities had settled u]ion their lives, Macaulay 
takes up only biographies whose principal incidents are known and 
read by all men — the lives of Atterbury, Bunyan, (ioldsmiih, 
Johnson, Pitt. He does not covet o[ienings for nice speculation. 
When a recondite question crosses his path, he provides an answer 
so simple and easy that the cautious reader doubts wh(fl:her it is 
complete. He makes Shakspeare the resnlt of the Reformation; 
Wordsworth the result of the Fiench Revolution; Byron "the 
interpreter between Wordsworth and the multitude." In dis- 
cussing the life of Bacon, he finds it necessary to give his opinion 
of the inductive method. The opinion is very [)lausible ; but 
scientific authorities pronounce it "ignorant and shallow in the 
extreme." In his life of Machiavelli, he undertakes to account 
for the peculiar state of Italian society in the fourteenth century. 
The explanation is most simple : the Italians were given to 
commerce and literature ; they emi)loyed mercenaries to fight 
their battles; the mercenaries were treacherous, — hence they 
ceased to de{)end upon war for effecting their desires : they came 
to despise courage and honour intrigue ; to think it contemptible 
to do by force what could be done by fraud. With all its simpli- 
city, the explanation is far from satisfactory ; it begins at too late 
a point. It does not explain why the Italians turned to commerce 
and literature, and paid the natives of ruder countries to do their 
fighting. If we knew th<it, we should prol)ably find that the 
treachery of the mercenaries encouragel, and did not originate, 
Cowardice and intrigue: a people originally indisposed to fight 
their own battles were not likely at any time to excel in the 
active virtues. Further, the employment of mercenaries was only 
one of many causes tending to encourage the practice and admira- 
tion of dishonest dexterity. 

In like manner in his History, with all his unexampled know- 
ledge of facts, and of every variety of opinion avowed by opposite 
parties, he still shows a disjjosition to i)Ut up with pat and easy 
explanations of events. For example, he explains the hostility 
of the clergy to tiie Revolution by the fact that it controverted 
flatly a'l their favourite doctrines about non-resistance and passive 
obedience. This is a most acce])tablc theory; it refers us to a 
well-known weakness of human nature- vet who that has read 



106 THOMAS tiABirUTON MACAULAY. 

Macaulay's own ]ii(ture of the multitude of conflicting interests 
then prevalent will believe that this was the sole cause of the 
clerical disaffection 1 

Another example of his love of simple explanations is seen in 
the prominence he everywhere gives to the doctrine of reaction. 
The discontent under Cromwell and under William is compare>l 
to the discontent under Moses ; and all such cases are spoken of 
as reactions of feeling. So the "appalling outbreak of licentiou*;- 
ness " after the Restoration is explained as the natural result of 
the Puritan austerity. In all these instances the alleged law ia 
a familiar fact of our nature ; and we are willing to accept it as 
a full explanation, though it is far from being so. 

He is, then, readily understood, because he deals with familiar 
subjects, and explains difficu'ties by a reference to familiar things. 
But this is (mly a small element of his intelligibility. The main 
element is his close and constant adherence to the concrete. 

The terse abstract statement so familiar to the reader of John- 
son, occurs but rarely in Macaulay, and only as a variety of expres- 
sion. He discusses everything in the concrete. When he states 
an abstract proposition, unless it is all the more familiar, he 
follows it u]) with a plethora of jiarticular cases. We have seen 
(p. 97) that his prodigious knowledge of particulars betrays him 
into a superfluity of illustration. 

In describing the conduct of individuals, he is not content with 
general terms : he does not simply style thera brave, or just, or 
sagacious ; he compares them with some well-known embodiment 
of these qualities, or relates significant circumstances. Thus, in a 
passage already referred to, he says that "had the administration 
of James been able and splendid, it would probably have been 
fatal to our country." Many writers would have been content 
with this plain statement, but Mac aulay goes on to say : — 

" Had he been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurire of Nassau, or like 
Gustavus Adolpluis, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, ha<i he ])ut liimself 
at the head of the Protestauts of Eurojie, liad he j^^ained great victories over 
Tilly and S[)inolu, had he adoined Westmin.ster with the spods of Bavarian 
mouHsteries and Flemish cathedials, had he hung Austiiaii and Ciistilian 
banners in Saint Paul's, and liad he found hinisell, af'er giciit acliieve- 
nients, at the head of hfty tiious;ind troops, hrave, well disciiiliued, and 
devotedly atta( hed to his person, the English Parliament would soon have 
been nothing more than a name." 

In conveying an idea of the doctrines of the Church of England, 
instead of plunginic into details and bald generalities, he hits them 
off boldly by stating the position of the Church of England rela- 
tively to other Churches, and enlivens the comparison with the 
names of representative men : — 



CLEARNESS. 1U7 

"To this day the constitution, the doctrinos, and the sorvicrs of the 
Clmrch, retain tlie visilde marks of tiie conijironiisc from which slie s|'i:ini{. 
8he <iccui>ies a middle position lietvvcen tlie Churciies of Rome and Genevi. 
Jlcr ihx-lrinal cont'cssioiis and discomscs, composed by Protestants, S(^t lortli 
jtrinciples cd'theolojiy in wldi'ii Calvin or Knox would have found scarcidy a 
word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgi\inL:s, derived from the an- 
cient liturgies, are ver)' generally such that Bishop Fisher or Cardinal Pole 
might have heartily joined in tiiem. A controversialist who ]iuts an Arnim- 
ian sense on her articles and homilies, will be ]ironounced by candid men 
to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine of 
baptismal regeneration can be discovered in her liturgy." 

In stating quantity or dimension, he arlds to the dry unreinem- 
berable ciphers a comparison with some similar case in the lump. 
His " third chapter" is much indebted to this art of relieving the 
tedious quotation of figures. Thus — 

"Cornwall and Wales at present yield annually near fifteen thousand 
tons of copper, worth near a million and a half sterling — that is to say, 
worih about twice as mueli as the annual produce of all English mines of all 
descriptions in the seventeenth century." 

In like manner he substitutes familiar ways of reckoning time 
in place of the preci.se notation by dates. Thus, in describing the 
amalgamation of races after the Conquest, he says : — 

"The great-grand.sons of tliose who had fought under William, and the 
great-grandsons of those who had fought under Harold, began to draw near 
to each other in friendship ; and the iirst pleege of their ri conciliation was 
the Great Charter, won by their united exertions and Iramed tor their com- 
mon benefit." 

His way of dealing with cumbrous qualifications, explanations, 
and examples, is not an unmixed gain in the direction of sim- 
plicity. His method is, as we have seen, to make all such state- 
ments in sepiirate sentences, instead of joining them to the main 
statement in the same sentence. So far this is a gain : the mind 
is engaged with one thing at a time ; it is asked to take in the 
several statements one by one, instead of getting then> all at 
once along with an indication of their relationship-s. But this 
very severality of statement leads to confusion : the mind having 
grasped the separate facts, receives no clue to their mutual bear- 
ings, and is placed in danger of bewilderment. 

There is a way out of the difficulty — ntnncl}', to make the quali- 
fications and explanations as few as possible. This is hardly legiti- 
mate; yet we have seen that Macaulay is suspected of adopting it 

Clearness. 

In the Introduction (p. 17) we mentioned Macaulay as one of 
the writers whose style justifies a subdivision of Clearness into 
Perspicuity and Precision. He is perspicuous, but not precisa 

To say that " not an ambiguous sentence is to be found through- 



108 THOMAS BABINGTON AIACAULAY. 

oat his works," is attributing a perfection hardly possible for 
mortal writer. Doubtless very few of his sentences are amliiL;;u- 
ous, even at first glance ; and in several that do mislead on first 
inspection, the meaning is not hard to find. His general method 
is decidedly perspicuous, although, as we have seen in discussing 
his paragraphs, it also comes shurt of perfection, and is open to 
amendment. His numerous examples and comparisons conduce 
greatly to perspicuity. And, finally, his extraordinary number of 
contrasts is a help in the same direction. 

While Macaulay is one of the most perspicuous of English 
writers, he has no claim to the merit of being minutely exact. 
We have seen that, after stating a general principle, he makes his 
meaning perspicuous — clear in its leading outlines — by a free 
quotation of examples. But he quotes his examples roundly and 
confidently; he very seldom pauses to take note of casuistical' 
objections, of special circumstances making a particular case doubt- 
ful as an example of his general assertion : Frederick the Great is 
a typical German, and commits blunders in French that would 
have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ; Sir Walter 
Scott is a typical Scotsman, and he perpetrates Scotticisms that a 
Londim apprentice would laugh at ; Ben Jouson was a great man, 
Hoole a very small man — yet Ben Jonson's verse was rugged, and 
Hoole, as coming after Pope, poured out decasyllabic verses in 
thousands, " all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other 
as the blocks which have passed. through Mr Brunei's mill in the 
dockyard at Portsnionth." In like manner his comparisons are 
pers])icuous, are good as broad indications of his general meaning; 
but they have the same defect — a defect for certain purposes at 
least — of not being nicely pointed to the relevant circumstances, 
of not entering into exact details. We get but a vague notion of 
the doctrines of the Church of England from the statement that 
"she occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome 
and Geneva;" and little distinct information about Addison's 
p4tistle from the statement that "it contains passages as good as 
the second-rate j^assages of Pope, and would have added to the 
rei)utation of Parnell or Prior," It is not by such I'ougli asser- 
tions that accurate knowledge is imparted ; they convey rather the 
conceit of knowledge than the reality; they are simple but vague. 

When we insist upon Macaulay's want of minute exactness, 
of all pretension to be called an accurate writer, it is but fair to 
notice that minute exactness, scrupulous accuracy, did not accord 
with the popular design of his works. He wrote for hurried 
readers, and more to amuse or interest than to instruct. He 
considered that "laborious research and minute investigati(m " 
belonged to authors by profession. We can excuse a want of 
exactness in a writer so anxious to make his language perspicu- 



STRENGTH. ] 09 

ous. For his i)ei-.s]iicuity he certainly deserves all praise ; and it is 
always right to point out that from this very quality his inexact- 
ness is easily discovered, and that he ] masses for shallow in many 
quarters where a more shal ow and at the same time more obscnre 
writer would pass for profound. Particularly is lie admirable for 
his profuseness of exemplification : he often sui'plics us with the 
means of correcting his own indistinct generalities. Even his 
comparisons to individuals and siiecitic institutions, though vague, 
are seldom misleading : if they convey little substantial knowledge, 
they at least cnuvey no error. For such comparisons it ma}' al- 
ways be pleaded that they awaken curiosity, and set the inquirer 
on the right track ; if we desire fuller information, they direct us 
where to look for it. In a hasty review of the doctrines of the 
Church of England, it is perha[)S best to incite the reader to com- 
pare them with the doctrines of other Churclies ; and where limits 
preclude a full eiiscussion, to furnish no more detail than an index 
map. 

Strength. 

In the quality of strength, Macaulay offers a great and obvious 
contrast to De Qnincey — the contrast between brilliant animation 
and stately pomp. His movement is more rapid and less dijznified. 
He does not slowly evolve his periods, "as under some genial in- 
stinct of incubation:" he never remits his eti"orts to dazzle; and 
in his most swelling cadences, he always seems to be perorating 
against an imaginary antagonist. 

Most of the elements of his [ecu'iar animation have already 
been noticed in other connections. We have already commented 
upon the varied expression, the abrujit tiansitions, the constant 
play of antithesis, the perspicuous m tho 1, and the lively array 
of concrete particulars. We have also noticed implicitly the ex- 
hilarating pace both of the language and of the thoughts, the 
rapidity of the rhythm — as determined by shortness of phrase, 
clause, and sentence — and the quick succession of the ideas. 

As regards his animated "objectivity," or concreteness, there is 
one thing that might be brought out more fully — namely, his art 
of enlivening condensed narrative by pictorial, or at least concrete, 
circumlocutions. We quote as an example part of his account of 
Strafford : — 

" He had been one of the most distiiiftuislied members of tlie Opposition, 
and felt towards tliose whom he had deserted Uint jKCuliar vuiUgnity which 
fias, in all agrs, been characteristic of opvstatcs. He perfectly understood tlie 
feeiiiigs, the resources, and the policy of the party to which he had lately 
beloi)t,'ed, and had formed a vast and ileeply meditated sclieme u-hich verij 
nnarhf confoiinclcd even tlie able ladies of the statesmen by v/ioin the House of 
(Jommenis had been directed. . . . His object was to do for England all, 



110 TIIU-MAS BABIXGTON MACAULAY. 

and more than all, Ihnt Richelieu was doing in France ; to make Cluirles a 
monarch as absolute as any on the Continent," &c. 

These frequent allusions to actual men and things would alone 
make the style vivacious; the rapid succession of particulars is in 
itself exhilarating. 

He had a great command over the proper vocabulary of strength. 
He is very vehement in his epithets. Whole pages might be quoted 
that contain hardly a single adjective under the degree of enormous. 
One of his favourite themes is the corruption and jirofligacy of the 
Eestoration times. Whenever he has occasion to speak of this, he 
seems to fall into a passion, and uses the strongest language that 
propriety vi^ill allow. And this subject is only one out of many 
that i)rovoke his vehemence to an equal degree. On every sub- 
ject, indeed, he expresses himself with confidence, and in language 
habitually bordering on the extreme. 

He has been much taken to task for the violence of his invective. 
Certainly, when he conceived a dislike to an individual or to an 
institution, he expressed his feelings without reserve. And he 
disliked a great many characters. He disliked all the English 
statesmen of the Eevolution period for their treachery and want 
of patriotism. Sir William Temple he pronounces to be " the most 
respectable " of them. Yet even Temple, he declares, " was not a 
man to his taste"; he "had not sufhcient warmth and elevation of 
sentiment to deserve the name of a virtuous man." Judge Jeffreys 
he regards with the most absolute loathing, and holds up to con- 
tempt and hatred with an inlignation as cordial as if one of his 
own family had been among the blondy monster's many victims. 
Concerning this part of the History, Mr Croker said in the 'Quar- 
terly Pteview ' tliat the historian had almost realised Alexander 
Chalmers's ' Biographia Flagitiosa ; or, the Lives of Eminent 
Sc lundrels.' " He hates," said Mr Croker further, " nearly every- 
body but Cromwell, William, W^hig exiles, and Dissenting parsons." 
The last sneer goes perhaps too far; the insinuation is hardly cor- 
rect: Mncaulay was much more impartial in his liatred than this 
would imply. He hated some of the French Eepublicans as heart- 
ily as he hated any of our English ancestors, whether Whig or 
Tory. He has Avrittcn nothing stronger than his condemnation of 
Barrere. Barrere "approached nearer than any person mentioned 
in history or fiction, whether man or devil, to the idea of consum- 
mate and universal dc})ravity." This is very strong, but becomes 
stronger still as the historian proceeds. Here he makes Barrere 
an approximation to unqualified de})ravity : a little further, and 
he drops the slight reservation. "All the other chiefs of parties 
had some good qualities, and Barrere had nojie." " Barrere had 
not a single virtue, nor even the semblance of one." 

Sometimes, in his contemptuous and derisive moods, he uses a 



STRENGTH. 1 1 1 

studied meanness of ex}>res.sion that reminds us of tlie coarse 
familiarity of Swift. Thus, speaking of rJoswell, he says — "If he 
had not been a great fool, he ■would never have been a great 
writer." So of Chatham, he says — "He was not invited to be- 
come a placeman, and he therefore stuck fiinily to his old trade of 
patriot." This homely order of expression he often employs with 
great effect in the way of derisive refutation. Thus in ridiculing 
Southey's sentimental views on questions of polit'ca' economj', he 
says — " We might ask how it can be said that there is no limit to 
the production of paper money, when a man is hanged if he issues 
any in the name of another, and is forced to cash wliat he issues in 
his own 1" 

It is difficult to draw the line between .such strength of language 
and the figure of speech known as hyjierbole. The italicised ex- 
]iressions in the following passages are unmistakably liyperbolicaL 
Such expressinns are very common in Macaulay, and, read along 
with the context, do not strike us as rising far above the general 
level of his language : — 

" Tlie house of Rouibon was at tlie summit of liuinau greatness. Kn^l.ind 
had beiMi outwitted, and I'oniul inTsi-lf in a situation at once dcyradiiiff and 
pi-rilons. The people of P' ranee, not jiresauiui^ the ealaniities by whicli tiiey 
were destined to expiate the periidy of their soveieiL;n, iraU mad villi pride 
and delight. Eccry man looked as if a grrot estate had just been left him." 

" His own rellertions, his own energy, were to supply the place of all 
Downing Street and Somerset Hoiuic. , . . The preservation of an em- 
pire from a f(jrmidable eoniliination of foreign enemies, the eonstrnction of 
a government in all its parts, were acconijilislied by liiin, while every ship 
brought out bales of censure from liis employers, and while tlie lecords of 
every consultation wav^i filled with acrimonious minutes by colleagues." 

One of his modes of exaggeration is almost a mannerism. 
Whatever he hap|ieiis to be engaged with is in some respect or 
other the most wonderful thing that ever existed. The following 
are his two most common forms for expressing such a conviction : 
— (i.) " No election ever took place under circumstances so favour- 
able to the Court." (2.) " Of all the many unjiopular steps taken 
by the Oovcrnment, the most unpopular was the publishing of this 
declaration." 

He is sometimes betrayed into making the same extreme state- 
ment about two different persons. Thus he says of Clarendon — 
" No man ever laboured so hard to make himself despicable and 
ludicrous;" and it is notorious that he makes a like remark about; 
BoswelL 

So much for the animation of Macaulay's manner. As regards 
his choice of subjects, it may be .said in general that he is careful 
to take up only such as have an independent interest to the mass 
of English readers. Consequently his charms of style operate at 



112 TiDMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

every advantage ; they have no dead weight to overcome ; they 
are required only to support the natural interest of the matter. 
A History of England, if written with moderate spirit, would 
always have an attraction for every Englishman ; written with 
Macaulay's glowing patriotism and brilliant style, it proved more 
attractive than the most captivating novel. Similarly with his 
Essays. His article on Milton placed him at once in the first rank 
of popular favourites ; an extraordinary success resulting, not so 
much from the display of his literary knowledge, as from the 
happy application of his glittering rhetoric to a theme much can 
vassed at the time. All his essays are upon men of first-rate in- 
terest : any particulars about Machiavelli, Byron, Johnson, Bacon, 
Pitt, or Frederick the Great, are eagerly read, if there is any appear- 
ance of novelty in the manner of relating them. 

Great men and great events— these are the favourite themes of 
Macaulay. When such matter is handled in such a manner, no 
wonder that the writer is the most popular author of his day. 

Animation is our author's distinguishing quality ; but often 
from the grandeur of his subject, and of the objects that he brings 
into comparison with it from ail countries and from all times, his 
style takes a loftier tone. 

There is something more than animating in his easy manner of 
ranging through space and time. To be transported with such 
freedom from continent to continent, from dynasty to dynasty, 
and from age to age ; to pass judgment on the rival pretensions of 
the foremost men and the most august empires that have ajipeared 
in the world, — this, unless we have a very frivolous conception of 
what we are doing, should elevate us to the highest heights of 
sublimity. Macaulay's abrupt manner is sometimes antagonistic 
to the finest effects that might be accomplished by these ambitious 
surveys. But very often his eloquence is lofty and imposing. 

Thus, in advocating with wonted enthusiasm the apotheosis of 
Lord Clive : — 

" From Olive's second visit to India dates tlie political ascendancy of the 
English in that countr}'. His dexterity and rt'.s(duti()n realised, in tlie 
course of a few nioiitiis, more than all the f,'or;j;eous visions whicli liad floated 
before the in)a<riniition of Duideix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, 
such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never addeil 
to the dominion of Kome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such 
■wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triuinph, down the Sacred Way, 
and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The 
fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim wlien com- 
pared with the splendour of the exploits whic h the young English adven- 
turer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to cue l.al. of a 
Roman legion." 

Perhaps his noblest flight of sublimity is his eulogy of the 



PATHOS. 1 I 3 

Roman Catholic Government. This is in every \vay an adiuirahle 
specimen of his style. There is just one break in tlie snst.iiiied 
grandeur of the [lassage. He should not have introduced the nu- 
merical comparison between the different creeds — a taii of statistics 
is very chilling and repulsive amidst the glowing flow of a<Inii- 
ration. Maeaulay's abundance of hard information often betrays 
him into violations of Art. 

Pathos. 

In Maeaulay's style, as in his nature, there was more vigour 
than tenderness or delicacy. The al>ruptness and rapidity of tran- 
sition, and the unseasonable intrusion of hard matters of fact, which 
we have just referred to as being fatal to sustained sublimity, were 
no less fatal to sustained pathos. The following account of the 
death of Hampden illustrates the beauties and the faults of his 
pathetic narration : — 

" Hampden, with his head drooping, and his hands leaniiii^on his horse's 
neck, moved fi ehly out of the battle. 'Ilu- mansion which had been in- 
habited by his father-in-law, and from whi.di in liis* yontli he had carried 
home his bride Eliz.ilieth, was in sivrht. There still remains an alfecting 
tr:idition tlmt lie looked for a moment towards that beloved house, and tnade 
an eH'ort to go thitherto die. lint the enemy lay in iliat dinctioii. He 
turned his horse towards Tliame, where he arrived almost lainiing witli 
agony. Tlie surt^eoMs dressed his wonnds. But tlieie was no hope. Tiie 
]>ain which he siillered was most exci nciatin;;. Ihit lie endured it with 
admirable firmness and resifrnation. His lir-t care was lor his conii'ry. He 
wrote Ironi his betl several letiers to L<>ndi n concerning juiblic affairs, and 
sent a last pressing message to the head(piarteis, reconimending that the 
disjiersed forces should be coiicentiated. M hen ids public duties were jH-r- 
formed, he calmly iirepared himself to die. He was attendtti by a eleigy- 
nian of the Church of Eiijland, with whom he iiad lived in habits of 
intimacy, and by the chaplain of the Buckingliamsluie Green-coats, Dr 
S[)urton, whom Baxter describes as a famous and excellent divine." 

The galloping short sentences in the middle of the passage are 
.eadly out of harmony with the occasion, and noihing could be 
more uncongenial than the ostentatious scrap of anti(jnarian know- 
ledge foisted in at the end. 

His reflections on St Peter's Ad Vincula, where Monmouth was 
buried, are solemn and touching. He warns us that — 

" Death is tliere associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St Paiil's, 
with genius and virtue, with ] ubiic veneration, and with im))CiisliHl)le 
renown ; not, as in our humblest churches and cliuichyards, with eveiytliing 
that is most endearing in social and domestic charitii-.s,— but with wiiatever 
is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage tiiuiniih 
of implacable enemies, with the inci'nsianey, the ingratitude, the lowanlice 
of friends, with all the miseries of lalleu greatness and ot blighted lame," — 

and he then proceeds to record a long line of il ustrious and un- 
fortunate dead. The art of such a passage is of the simplest 

H 



114 THOMAS BABINGTON iMACAULAY. 

order. To us it is affecting as a vivid representation of the lapse 
of time, and of the disasters that wait upon greatness : but to tiie 
narrator it is little more than an exercise of historical memory. 

The Ludio'ous. 

^Macaulay's wit and humour are the wit and humour usually 
ascribed to " The True-Born Englishman." He has no command 
either of biting insinuation or of delicate raillery. His laugh is 
hearty and confident ; uns])aiing contempt, open derision, broad 
and boisterous humour. Of each of the three qualities thus 
loosely expressed, we shall ]>roduce examples: his portrait of 
Archbishop Lajid, for whom he "entertained a more unmitigated 
contempt than for any character in our history;" a shoit extract 
from his review of Mitfoid's 'History of Greece'; and the begin- 
ning of his review of Nares's ' Life of Lord Burleigh ' : — 

" Bad as the Arclibishop was, however, he was not a traitor within the 
statute. Nor was he liy any nieiuis so formidable as to be a proper subject 
for a retrospective ordinance of the Le.sishiture. His mind had not expan- 
sion enough to coin|iridieud a great seheme, good or bad. His oppressive 
acts were not, like tlio--e of the Eurl of Straffoid, parts of an extensive sys- 
tem. They were tiie luxuries in which a mean and irritable disposition 
imlnlg 'S iiself from dav to day, the excesses natural to a little mind in a 
great pla(V. 'i'he severest punishment wbich the two Houses could have 
iut! cti d on hirn would have iieen to set him at liberty, anil send him to 
Oxf'rd. There he m'ght have stayeil, tortured by his own diabidioal 
temper — hnngeiing for Puritans to pillory and mangle; [)la!:;uing the 
Cavaliers, for wnnr of somebody else to pl.igue, with his peevishness and 
absurdity ; jierformin^ griniMces and antics in the Cathedral ; continuing 
that ini^om]iarable Diary, wbich we never see without forgetting the vices 
of bis heart in the imbecility of his intellect, nunuting down his di earns, 
countinsi the drops of blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction 
of the salt, and listening for the note of the screech-owls. Contemjituous 
mercy was the only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on 
such a ridiculous old bigot." 

" The principal characteristic of this historian, the origin of his excellences 
and his defects, is a love of singularity. He has no notion of going with a 
multitule to do either good or evil. An exploded opinion, or an unpopular 
peison, has an iiresistilile charm for him. The same perverseness mav be 
traced in his diction. His style would never have been eleyaiit, biU it might 
at least have been manlv and perspicuous ; and nothing but the most elabor- 
ate care could possibly have ma le it so bad as it is." 

"The work of Dr Nares has filled us with astoiushinent similar to that 
which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he lauded in P>robdingnag, 
and saw corn as high as the oaks in tlie New Forest, thimbles as large as 
buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. Tlie whole book, and every 
com]>nnent part of it, is on a ^jigantic scale. The title is as long as an 
orii'»»iy preface; the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary 
bo..k ; and the book contains as much reading as an oi'dinary library. We 
cannot sum up the merits of the stupemious miss of paper which lies before 
us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely 



MELODY, HARMONY, TASTE — DESCKIPTION. 115 

pnnted quarto pngps, tliat it ornupies fifteen hundred iuclies culnV lucasuie, 
and that it \v('it,dis sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a Look iniglit, before 
tlte delu;:;e, liave been considered as liglu reading by Hil])a and Slialiiin. 
Hut, unhajipily, the life of man is now threescore years and ten ; and we 
cannot but tliink it somewhat unfair in Dr Narcs to demand from us so 
laige a portion of so sliort an ex'stence. 

"Comiiared witli tlie labour of leading through these volumes, nil other 
labour, the labour of thieves on the tieadmill, of childieii in factoiies, of 
negroes in sugar-plantations, is an agreeable recreation," &c. 

His masterpieces of broad ridicule are found in his literary 
reviews. He makes unmerciful j^anie of Southey's Political 
Economy, llobert Montgomery's Puems, and Croker's edition of 
BoswelL 

Melody, Harmony, Taste. 

^facaulay's rhythm is fluent, rarely obstructed by harsh combina- 
tions, but it is not rich and musical like De Quincey's. Thouirh 
often abrupt and always rapid, at times, as we have seen, it swells 
into more flowing cadences ; yet, at best, the melody of his sen- 
tences is the melndy of a fluent and rapid speaker, not the musical 
roll of a writer -whose ear takes engrossing delight in the luxuries 
of sound. 

Beyond amplifying the roll of his sentences when he rose to 
more stately declamation.s, he does iiot appear to have studied 
much the adaptation of sound to sense. His rhythm is well 
suited to the general vigour of his purposes; it is not much in 
harmony with quiet and delicate touches. 

Like De Quincey and t'arlyle, lie has certain salient manner- 
isms. The general voice of jiersons of cultivated taste is against 
his abrui)tness, his hyperbolical turn of ex})ression, and his need- 
less employment of antithesis. In these particulars he has trans- 
gres-sed the general rule of not carrying pungent and striking 
artifices to excess. Objection may also be taken to the unmiti- 
gated force of his derision and his humour. " There is too much 
horse-play in his raillery." 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Description. 

In one of his earlier essay.s, Macaulay lays down the opinion 
that mere descriptions of scenery are tiresome, and that still life 
needs as.sociations with human feeling to make it interesting. 
This explains why his writings contain so few descriptions of 
natural scenery. 

When engaged on his History he made it a point of conscience to 
visit and describe from personal observation the scenes of the most 
memorable events. He visited the battle-lield of Sedginocr, and 



116 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

describes the general appearance of the country at the present day 
as seen from the church-tower of Bridgewater. But the description 
is rather an ana ysis of the landscaiie into its general elements, 
mingled with various historical reminiscences, than a composition 
of those elements into a definite picture. In like manner lie wrote 
on the spot a description of the Irish towns round which the 
Englishry rallied at the Revolution — Kenmare, Enniskillen, and 
Londonderry. In describing Kenmare, he simply notes the gen- 
eral features of the district — " the mountains, the glens, the capes 
stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles 
build, the rivulets brawling down rocky i)asses, the lakes over- 
hung by groves, iu which the wild deer find covert;" elements, 
certainly, of gorgeous scenery, but left to the reader to form into 
a coherent landscape. His description of Londonderry is perhaps 
his most vivid effort. Yet even this is vague compared with the 
luminous word pointing of Carlyle. 

In his Essays he neglects many opportunities that a master of 
descriptive art would have eagerly seized. Had Carlyle written 
an essay on Lord Clive, he would have luxuriated in realising to 
Eng'ish readers the novel aspects of Indian scenery; he would liave 
put forth all his |)owers of imagery to convey a distinct impression 
of the shape and dimensions of the table-lands and the great valleys, 
and would have placed vividly before us the exnct "lie" of the 
hill-fortresses and the magnificent cities of the plains, the appear- 
ance of the surrounding country, and, as far as language can express 
such things, even the variations of sky and atmosphere. 

But is not Macaulay always sjioken of as a great pictorial artist 1 
True, he is so ; but in a very different sense from such artists as 
Carlyle. The dictum quoted above is the key to his choice of 
subjects. What he delights to group and to delineate is not 
inanimate things, but the condition, actions, and productions of 
man. When he describes a town he is concerned less with its 
shape and its position relatively to the surrounding lan<lscape, 
than with its political or commercial importance, the number and 
character of its poiiulation, or the splendour of its buildings. The 
description of Benares is a fair specimen of his manner : — 

" ITis first design was on Benares, a city which in wealth, population, 

dignity, ami sanctity, was among the foremost ol" Asia. It was coTninonly 
believe.l tliat liall a million of hnman heings was crowded into that labyrinth 
of lofty alleys, rich with slnines, and minarets, and h:il ■onies, and carved 
oriels to which the sacred apes chuig by hundreds. The traveller coidd 
scarce make l;i^ way tUroUL^di the press of holy mendicants, and not less 
holy bulls. The broad and stately flights of steps which descended from 
these owarming haunts to the bathini^'-pl ices ahmg the Ganges, were worn 
evcr_y day by the footsteps of an innumerable multitude of worshippers. The 
schools and temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from every province where 
the lirahminical laith was known. . . . Commerce had as many iidgrima 



DESCRIPTION. 117 

ns religion. All along the shores of the veiierahlo stream lay preat floeta of 
vessels laden with ri li nicrchandise. From the looms of Hcnares went forth 
the most delicate silks tliat adorned the balls of St James's and of the Petit 
Trianon ; an<l in the bazaars the muslins of Bengal and the sabres of Oude 
were mingled with the jewels of Goluonda and the shawls of Cashmere." 

There is thus no lark of pictorial matter in Macaulay. The 
peculiarity is, that so much of it has a direct connection with 
human beings, and tliat though of a strongly objective turn of 
mind, he had no natural bent for the descri[)tion of still life. It 
was vigorous, stirring movement — "the rush and the roar of prac- 
tical life " — that chiefly engaged his interest. He is nowhere more 
in his element than in describing a gorgeous pageant, or the de- 
monstrations of an excited mob. He enters with great zest into 
the reception of Cimrles I. at Norwich, the " Progress " of James 
II., the procession of William and Mary along the Strand, the 
ceremony of the coronation, and suchlike. He describes the 
accoin[);inying festivities with gusto ; the illuminations, the bells 
ringing, the " conduits spouting wine," the " gutters running with 
ale." There is probably no prose passage that has been oftener 
committed to memory than his account of the trial of Hastings. 
One of his most vivid pictures is his detail of the ])rolonged excite- 
ment of London during the persecution and trial of the seven 
Bishops, and the burst of joy upon their acquittal: — 

"Sir Roger Langley answered 'Not guilty!' As the words passed his 
lijis, Halifax sprang n[) and waved his hat. At that signal, benciies and 
giilleries raised a shout. In a moment ten thousand persons, who crowded, 
the great hall, re])lied with a still louder shout, wliich made the old oakea 
roof ernck ; and in another n.oment the itununerable throng without set up 
a third huzza, whieh was iieard at Temple Bar. The bonts which covered 
the Tiiauies gave an answering cheer. A peal of gun]iowch-r was heard on 
tiie water, and another, and another ; and so, in a few moments the glad 
tidings were Hying past the Savoy and tljc Friars to London i5ridge, and to 
the forest of masts below. As the news sjiread, streets and squares, market- 
places and coiree-hiiuses, broke forth into acclamations. Yet were the 
accdamations less strange than the weeping. For the feelings of men had 
been wound up to sucii a I'oint. that at length the stern English nature, so 
little used to outward signs of emotion, ga\e way, and thousands sobbed 
alond for very joy. M' an ^v bile, from the outskirts of the multitude, horse- 
men were si'urring ofl' to bear along all the great roads intelligence of the vic- 
tory of our Cluirch and nation." 

As regards the method of such descrii>tions. Thoy follow very 
much the same rules as the description of scenery. The describer 
should begin with a comprehensive view of his subject. In this 
respect ^lacaulay is, as a rule, e.xemplary. In his description of 
Benares, for instance, the first sentence is a summary introduction 
to wh;it follows. Further, the describer should observe a method 
in the details ; he should place together all that are connected, and 
should give them either .n tiie direct or in the inverse order of 



118 THOMAS UABINGTON MACAULAY. 

importnnce : he should, at least", consider what is tlie most Inmin 
ous method in the particular case. This jMacaulay is not sufficiently 
careful to do: we saw (p. 95) that his order of statement is some- 
times confused. The description of the London rejoicings is of 
the nature of a description from the traveller's ]ioint of view. 

After all, the objective character of our author's style consists 
more in the pictorial touches brought in by a side wind than ia 
the direct description of objects. We have already seen, that 
instead of making a plain statement of fact, he states some sug- 
gestive circumstance. Instead of saying that nobles and even 
princes were proud of a University degree, he says that they 
"were proud to receive from a University tlie privilc'(/e of ivearing 
the doctoral scarlet." Instead of saying that the Dutch would 
never incur the risk of an invasion, he says that "they would 
never incur the risk of seeinr/ an invadinr/ arviy encamped between 
Utrecht and Amsterdam." Such concrete circiunstances are very 
instrumental in keeping up the ])ictorial air of his pages — impart- 
ing all the more splendour that, as a rule, they are loud and glar- 
ing, rather than quiet and significant. 

In the important process of describing the feelings, he displays 
his usual objectivity. He tells what ^leople said, what they did, 
how they looked, what visions passed through their imaginations, 
and leaves the particularities of their state of feeling to be inferred 
from these material indications. Carlyle represents Jolinson "with 
his great greedy heart and uus]>eakaMe chaos of thoughts ; stalk- 
ing mournful on this e;uth, eagerly devouring what spiritual thing 
he could come at." Macaulay represents him with more of concrete 
circumstances : " ransacking his father's shelves," " devouring 
hundreds of pnges," " treating the .-icademical authorities Avith 
gross disrespect," standing " under the gate of Pembroke, haran- 
guing a circle of lads, over whom, in synte of his tattered gown 
and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed 
ascendancy." 

Narrative, 

Whatever be the ultimate judgment of able critics regarding the 
merits of Macaulay's 'History of England,' viewed as a philoso- 
phical history or as a solid narrative of public events, there can 
be no doul>t that it was and is an eminently popular work It 
gained the po])ular favour not by slow degrees, but at a leap ; five 
editions, numbering in all ab-ut 18,000 copies, were sold in six 
mouths. In the following remarks, we cannot profess to analyse 
all the ingredients of his extraordinary charm for English readers, 
but only to observe how far he fulfils certain conditit)n3 of per- 
spicuous, instructive, and interesting narrative. 



NARRATIVE. 1 1 9 

The affiiirs of England during the reigns of James and William 
were considerably involved, and without skilful arrangement a liis- 
tory of that |ieiiod could hardly fail to be confused. ^laiaulay's 
exhibition of the movements of diSejent ])arties, the different 
aspects of things in the three parts of the kingdom, the compli- 
cated relations between James and William, and the intrigues oi 
different individuals, is managed with great perspicuity. 

He is exemplary in keeping pnuninent the main action and the 
main actor. After the death of Charles, our interest centres in 
James. We are eager to know how the change of monarch was 
received in London and through the country, and how James 
stood in his relations with France and Home, with Scotland, and 
with the English clergy and the Dissenters. Macaulay follows the 
lead of this natural interest, and does not leave James until he is 
fairly settled on the throne. James once established, our interest 
in hini is for the time satisfied, and we desire to know the i)ro- 
ceedings of his baffled (Opponents. Accordingly, the historian 
transports us to the asjdum of the Whig refugees on the Continent, 
describes them, and keeps their machinations in Holland, and their 
successive invasions of Britain, prominent on the stage until the 
final collapse of their designs and the execution of tlieir leaders. 
That chapter of the History ends with an account of the crurltiea 
j)erpetrated on the aiders and abettors of the western insurrection 
under Monmouth. Then the scene changes to Ireland, the next 
interesting theatre of events. ^-\nd so on : there were various 
critical junctures in the hisiory of the Government, and the events 
leading to each are traced separately. 

The arrangement is so easy and natural, that one almost won- 
ders to see it alleged as a merit. But when we compare it with 
Hume's arrangement of the events of the same period, we see that 
even a historian of eminence may pursue a less luminous method. 
Hnme relates, first, all that in his time was known of James's 
relations with France; then the various ]>articuiars of his adminis- 
tration in England, down to the insurrection of Monmouth ; then 
the state of atiairs in Scotland, including Argyle's invasion and the 
conduct of the Parliament. He goes upon tlie i)lan (i taking up 
events in local departments, violating both the order of time and 
the order of dependence. Macaulay makes the government of 
James the connecting rod or trunk, taking up, one after another, 
the difficulties that successively besiege it, and, when necessary, 
stepping back to trace the particular difficulty on hand to its ori- 
ginal, without regard to locality. By grap])ling thus boldly with 
the complicacy of events, he renders his narrative more continuous, 
and avoids the error of making a wide separation between events 
that were closely connected or interdejjcndent. He does not, like 
Hume, give the descent of Monmouth in one section, and the 



120 TPIOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

descent of Argyle upon Scotland, an event prior in point of time, 
in another and subsequent section. James, after bis accession, put 
off the meeting of the English Parliament till the more obsequious 
l^arliament of Scotland should set a good example. Macaulay 
tells us at once James's motive for delaying the meeting of the 
English Parliament, and details what happened in Scotland during 
the fortnight of delay. In Hume's History, we ch) not hear of the 
proceedings instituted by the Scottish Parliament till after the 
execution of Argyle, by which time we are interested in another 
chain of events, and do not catch the influence of the proceedings 
in Scotland upon the proceedings in England. 

In the explanation of events, Macaulay is simple, perspicuous, 
and plausible, but does not stril<:e us as being precisely correct. 
When he can produce a broad and obvious motive, he does not 
refine upon the proportionate influence of minor motives. Upon 
this tendency we remarked in treating of the intellectual qualities 
of his style. If it does not add to his scientific value, it adds at 
least to his popularity. 

As compared with the historians of last century — Hume, Gibbon, 
Eobertson — Macaulay is superior in the use of summaries, pro- 
spective and retrospective, to help our compiehension of details. 
As compared with Carlyle, he is inferior in this respect. Before 
entering into the detail of an incident, he usually favours us with 
a general sketch of its nature, and its bearing on wdiat has been 
or what is about to be related ; but he is not so exemplary in pre- 
figuring the course of events on the larger scale. You can usually 
tell from the beginning of a para>,naph the general substance of 
what is to foUow ; you cannot always tell from the beginning of a 
chapter what may be the nature of its contents. 

The interest excited by the * History of England ' on its first 
appearance was doubtless due partly to its controversial tone, and 
its able support of a popular side. With his hatred of abstract 
principles of government, it was not to be supposed that he would 
shape his narrative with a view to drawing from the facts any 
general i)olitical lessons, such as a caution against the evils of 
arbitrary government. What he wished to enforce was not an 
abstract lesson, but a strongly cherished opinion amounting briefly 
to this, that the government of the Stuarts was a curse to the 
country, and that the Hevolution was a blessing. 

The History has been wittily cnlled "The Whig Evangel," and 
we have seen it described as "An Epic Poem, of which King 
William is the Hero." To the one title it may be objected that 
our author shows the Whig statesmen of the Pievolution to have 
been quite as discreditable as the Tory statesmen ; and to the 
other, that the work is more rhetorical and polemic than poetical 



NARRATIVE. 121 

If we must have a caricature secondary title for the book, it would 
perhaps be more accurately descrilied as "A Plea for the Glorious 
Memory," or "A short and easy ^lethoJ with tlie btuarts." 

One of Macaulay's pet theories, advocated with his usual en- 
thusiasm, was his view as to the proper method of writing history. 
He was eager for the admission of greater scenlcal interest. He 
loses no op|)()rtiinity of striking at "the dignity of history," which 
would confine the historian to "a detail of public occurrences — the 
operations of sieges — the chan'^es of administrations — the treaties 
— the conspiracies — the rebellions." He would "intersperse the 
details which are the charm of historical romances." "The per- 
fect historian is lie in whose work the character and sjiirit of an 
age is exhibited in miniature." "We should not have to look for 
the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their 
phraseology in 'Old Mortality'; for one half of Kin<f James in 
Hume, and for the other half in the ' Fortnnes of Ni-el.' " 

Following out this theory, he gives to his work a strong tincture 
of personal interest. Even in the introductory summary, when 
briefly sketching the Commonwealth and the Itestoration, he does 
not forget his ideal; he brings up the "great characteristics of the 
age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce 
licentious! wss of the swearing, dicing, drunken rci)robates, whose 
excesses disgraced the royal cause — the austerity of the Presby- 
terian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the Independent 
jtreachers in the camj), the precise garb, the severe countenance, the 
petty scrujiles, the affected accent, tiie absurd names and phrases 
uhich marked the Puritans," — and so on. When he enters on the 
reign of James II. he turns aside much more from public transac- 
tions to the details of private life. He resuscitates all the Court 
gossip of the period. He draws the character of every courtier of 
any note — rakes up their foibles, repeats their choicest strokes of 
wit. He read thousands of forgotten tracts, sermons, and satires 
in order to revive for us the personalities of the age. He devotes 
fifteen pages to the last illness and death of Charles II., and forty 
to the persecution and trial of the Seven Bishnps. 

It may well be asked whether with all this infusion of personal 
interest he comes near his ideal of presenting a miniature of the 
age. If any one had objected to him tliat he shows us the life of 
the courtiers and the clergy rather than the life of the people, he 
would prol)ably have pointed to the passage in his History where 
he despatches all that he has to say about the people in six pages, 
witii the remark that so little is known concerning "those who 
held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of 
Norwich, an I squared the Portland stone for 8t Paul's." 

The interest of personality is not the only interest in his nar- 



122 THOMAS BAniXGTON MACAULAY. 

rative. He has a natural tendency to give it a dramatio turn. 
When he introduces his personages, and ex[)lains what part they 
are playing, he drops a hfnt that by-and-by they may be found 
playing a very different part. We have already seen how invet- 
erate is his habit of deferring an event till he lias told us what 
ought to have happened or what might have happened. This 
bears a strong resemblance to dramatic plotting, and excites very 
much the same interest ; it is one of the best recognised means of 
raising expectation and keeping it in suspense. In like manner he 
expatiates on all the preliminaries of an action till he has awakened 
in us something like the excitement of those that are watching 
and waiting for the event. 

Another great charm in ^lacaulay's narrative is his hopeful tone, 
his hearty sympathy with progress, and confident belief in the 
fact. He has no faith in the dogma that former times were better 
than the present ; he maintains with great variety of eloquence that 
mankind is steadily and lapidly moving forward. Sanguine minds 
are never weary of quoting the triumphal opening of his History, 
and in particular his uidiesitating declaration that " the history 
of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently 
the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement." 

For English readers this charm is increased by the historian's 
patriotism. The world is advancing, and England is walking in 
the van. 

The '^celebrated Third Chapter.'" — This chapter professes to give 
a picture of the social condition of "the England which Charles II. 
governed." It is interesting as an elaborate attempt to delineate 
a cross section of history. 

Many of the details have been challenged. He has been 
accused of colouring facts to suit his prejudice in favour of 
moilern cultivation, and to gratify his favourite passion for an- 
tithesis. His accounts of the country squire and the country 
clergyman, of Buxton, of the suburbs of London, and of one or 
two other things, are said to be greatly exaggerated. He is 
charged wHth taking the lampoons of the time as documents of 
literal fidelity. 

Without pronouncing upon the merits of these charges, which 
the historian's defenders declare to be trivial, we may enter two 
objections to the chapter. 

(i.) The information is far from complete; it gives a very 
imperfect view of the .state of society during the period chosen. 
A preference is given to flash and startling facts^to the material 
that is good for pictures and for dazzling paradoxes. Hardly any- 
thing is told us concerning the machinery of commerce, the machi- 
nery of government, or the system of ranks ; he says nothing 



EXrOSITION. 123 

about that important social fact how far it was jiossible to pass 
fi'oin one station in life to another. The chapter remains a ,urcat 
achievement for a historian who was not also a special antiquarian, 
and who did not make even history liis exclusive work; but it is 
far from being a com[)lete sketch of the period. 

(2.) There is, as already noticed, no principle of order — no 
endeavour to help the reader's memory. When we study the 
chapter, we can trace in the succession of subjects a certain train 
of association ; but there is slight cnnnection apparent upon the 
surface, and one's impression at the end of the whole is not a little 
confused. The population leads him to speak of the taxation as 
the only reliable means of getting at the po[)ulation ; the taxation 
suggests the public exjienditure; the public expenditure the public 
resources, agriculture and mining ; agriculture leads to rent ; rent 
to the country squire ; the .squire to the clergyman, — and so on. 
On such a metlio !, or rather no-method, there could be nothing 
but intricacy and confusion. 

I'Jxposiiion. 

We have already seen how far Macaulay possesses the gifts of 
an able expositor. With his mastery of language, he can rc})eat 
his statements in great variety of forms. In his love of antithesis 
he often has recourse to the obverse form of rejietition. He has 
an incomparable command of examples and illustrations. Thus, 
of all the four great arts of exposition he is a master. 

Yet he cannot rank as an expositor with such a writer as Paley. 
This is partly on account of a deduction that must l)e made from 
his powe;s of accurate exposition. He is too fond of extreme and 
"sensational" examples, and of easy concrete illustrations not 
restricted to th'> relevant point. But the great detraction is. that 
he did not exhibit his powers, like Palcy, on subjects of consider- 
able inherent dilKculty, 

Macaulay's bent was naturally towards subjects of popular in- 
terest. Whatever he cared to master he could expound witli the 
utmost clearness ; but he had little inclination for hard abstract 
principles. His 'Notes on the Intlian Penal Code' are hardly an 
exception. He has to support tiie provisions of the Code by 
general considerations, and his statement of these consideiations 
is very clear and very interesting. Put the subject is not natu- 
rally dry and reimlsive. There is no greater temptation to make 
the Notes abstruse than there is to make a critical essay abstiu«e. 
He makes them interesting and animated by exactly the same 
arts of style as give such interest and animation to' his essays. 
He mixes U[) the statement of the general principles with particu- 
lar cases : sometimes, without stating the principle at all, he merely 
suggests it by saying that the particular [irovision he is defending 



12-1 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

rests on the same principle as some familiar rule of English law. 
He finds ample scope for antithesis in contrasting other Penal 
Codes with the various piovisions of the Code recommended for 
India. Not even paradoxes are wanting ; he surprises us at times 
by finding unsuspected reasons for departing from some familiar 
practice — such as the practice of allowing iu certain cases an option 
between fine and imprisonment. 

Persuasion. 

Macaulay was a very popular orator. Soon after he entered 
Parliament, he spoke in the same debate with the late Lord 
Derby ; and Sir James Mackintosh describes their speeches as 
"two of the finest speeches ever spoken in Parliament." And 
many men still living confess that their prejudices ;igainst the 
Reform Bill of 1832 were first overcome by his eloquent and per- 
spicuous arguments. 

His speeches are not the only evidence of his debating power. 
He is essentially a controversialist : it is hardly an exaggeration 
to say that he never makes a statement without attem[)ting to 
prove it. His history is a protracted argument in favour of the 
Revolution. The "Third Chajiter" is a broadside against the 
superiority of former days. When he has no real opponent to 
refute, no actual prejudice to overturn, he imagines ail sorts of 
objections for the purpose of |)roving them to be groundless. 
His ' Notes on the Indian Penal Code ' are defences against 
supposed olijections. His Essay on Warren Hastings is a plea 
under the disguise of a judicial summing u]). Not that he 
argues solely from the love of argument ; always in earnest, he 
is eager to bring others round to his own views— ever bent upon 
convincing and converting. 

This deteimination to persuade is at the root of his efforts to 
make himself understood by everybody, already noticed as the 
main cause of his simplicity of style. He is not content to 
utter an opinion in a form intelligible from his own point of 
view : having constantly before him the desire to convince all 
classes of minds, he asks how the opinion will be regarded 
by peo|)le of opposite sentiments, and shapes his statement ac- 
cordingly. 

Knowledge of those addressed. — Macaulay's audience may be 
said to have been the whole English-speaking world. That he 
knew many favourite maxims and ways of looking at things, is 
sufficiently proved by his wide popularity. 

He humoured in an especial manner two feelings that are said 
to be peculiarly English — love of the practical as opposed to the 
theoretical, and love of material progress. He " distrusts all 
general theories of government ; " he was intensely inimical to 



PERSUASION. 1 2 ') 

James Mill's Es.say on Government. He loves gradual changes; 
he professes a horror of rev<ilutions and a contempt for Itadii-als. 
And while a stanch friend to intellectual and moral progress, 
he is far from seeing any danger to either in the niultijilication 
of I'hysical comforts: he exults in the English "public credit 
fruitful of marvels;" and one of the ideals that he "wishes 
from his soul" to see realised is, "employment always plentiful, 
wages always high, food always cheap, and a large family con- 
sidered not as an encumbrance, but as a blessing." 

Another thing that could not fail to endear him is his out- 
spoken pride of country. By the mixture of races in our island 
was formed, he says, "a people inferior to none existing in the 
world." Englishmen "were then, as they are still, a brave, 
proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, 
or to servitude." 

Means of Persuasion. — (i.) Always perfectly master of the 
facts of his subject, he displays the highest rhetorical ingenuity 
in giving happy turns to ojiposing arguments. This was one 
great secret nf Ids success in the lieforming Parliaments of 1831 
and 1832. Hardly an argument could be advanced hut he turned 
it against the S|»i'aker — maintaining with all his paradoxical point 
that it was precisely the consideration that led him to advocate 
Eefoini. The Reformers were taunted with a leaning to universal 
suffrage. " Every argument," returns Macaulay, " which would 
induce me to oppose universal suffrage, induces me to support 
the plan which is now before us. I am opposed to universal 
suffrage because I think that it would produce a destructive 
revolution. I support this plan because I am sure that it is 
our best security against a revolution." Again, in answer to 
the hackneyed appeal to the wisdom of our ancestors, he. says, 
" We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors ; and in one respect, 
at least, they were wiser than we. They legislated for their 
own times. They looked at the England which was before 
them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as many 
members to York as they gave to London, because York had 
been the capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus ;" 
and so on. Again, " It is precisely because our institutions 
are so good that we are not perfectly contented with them ; 
for they have educated us into a capacity for enjoying still 
better institutions." Once more — the promoters of the Anatomy 
Bill were accused of trying to make a law to benefit the rich 
at the expense of the ]ioor. "Sir," said Macaulay, "the fact 
is the direct reverse. This is a bill which tends especially to 
benefit the poor ; " and he proceeded to prove his assertion by 
examples. 

Another of the devices of his fertile ingenuity and perfect ac- 



126 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, 

quaintance with his subject is to accuse his Conservative opponents 
of holding dangerous principles. He carries the war into the 
enemy's country. " If," cries the ]\Iember for the University of 
Oxford — " If we pass this law, Eiiglanrl will soon be a Re[)ublic. 
The Reformed House of Commons will, before it has sate ten 
years, depose the King and expel the Lords from their House." 

"Sir," returns Macaulay, "if my honourable friend could prove this, he 
would have succeeded in bringing an argument fir demoeracy infinitely 
stronffpr than any tliat is to be foundin the works of Paine. Jly honourable 
friend's proposition is in fact this: that our monarchical and aristom-atical 
institutions have no hold <in tlie public mind of England ; that these insti- 
tutions are regarded with aversion by a decided ma.j^irity of the middle cla^s. 
. . . Nciw, sir, if I were convinced that the great body of the mi Idle class 
in England look with aversim on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be 
forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical 
and aristocratical institutions are nnsuited to ray country.'' 

So when they opposed the disfranchisement of the Rotten Bor- 
oughs on the ground that it was s|)oIi;ition of property, Macaulay 
warned them of the danger of such a principle : — 

"You bind up two very different tilings in the hope that they may stand 
together. Take heed tliat they do not tall together. You tell the people 
that it is as unjust to disl'rancliise a great lord's nomination borough as to 
confisrate hi-; estate. Take heed that yon do not succeed in convincing weak 
and ignorant minds that there is no more injustice in confiscating his estate 
than in dislranchising liis borough." 

(2.) His powers of drawing a strong and vivid picture are of 
great service in helping him to make out his case. In arguing oji 
the Reform Bill, he was at great p lins to m ike a powerful state- 
ment of the inequalities of the existing system of representation, 
and sketclicd with his best vigour the following strong example : — 

" IP, sir, I wislicd to make such a foreigner clearly understand what I con- 
sider as the great detVcts of our system, 1 would conduct liim through that 
immense citv which lies to the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford 
Street — a city superior in size and in p ipulation to the cai)itals of many 
mighty kingdoms ; and prob ibly superior in opulence, intelligence, ami 
general respix-talnlity to any city in the world. I would conduct him throu<<h 
that interiiiiiialile siiCi-ession of streets and squares, all consisting of well- 
built and well-furnished houses. I would make him observe the brilliancy 
of the shops, and the crowd of well appointed c([nipages. I would show him 
that magnificent circle of p.daces which surrounds the Kegent's I'ark. I 
would tell him that the rental of this district was far greater than that of 
the whole kingibim of Scotland at the time of the Union. And then I would 
tell him that this was an unrepresented district." 

To take another well-known instance. In answer to the common 
objection that the Reform Bill would not be final, he argued that 
finality was not to be expected — that a changed state of society 
m ght again call for a change in the represcntati )n. His manner 
of putting the possibilities of change was characteristic : — 



PERSUASION. 127 

"Another goneration may find in the new rcprpscntntire systmi defects 
8iuh .as we find in the oI«l rei>iesentative s)'steni. Civilisation will iirocccd. 
Wealth will increase. Industry and trade will find out new sea's. The 
same ciiuses wiiich liave turned .so many villai,'es into great towns, which 
have turned so many thousands of squart; Tiiilcs of tir and lieMth into corn- 
fields and oi<-liards, will continue to opi-ratc. H'ho can say that a hinidrcd 
yars hence there may not be, on the s/mre of xo7ve desolate and silent bay in 
the Ilclirides, another Liverpool with its docks and ivarc/ioiises and cndhu^s 
forests p/ma.'-ts? ]Vho can say that thf. huye chimneys of another Mavrh^ster 
may not rise in tlie wilds of Conncmara ? For our children we do not pre- 
tend to legislate." 

(3.) Tils great powers of <]el)ate appear chiedy in refutation. He 
Is critical rather tlian constructive. He takes deliglit in ex]io.sing 
false analoiiies and false generalises, and in showing that anticii)a- 
tions are not warranted by previoti.s experience. 

When he can put a doctrine upon the horns of a dilemma, he 
tosses it with great spirit* A good instance is his as,sauit on 
primogeniture ; which al.so illustrates his habit of referring all 
generalities to the fundamental particulars, and his favourite man- 
ner of retorting that the facts prove exactly the opposite of what 
is asserted : — 

" It is evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the foun- 
dations of GoviTunient, altogether unsettles tiiem. Did the divine and im- 
mutable law of primogeniture adniii feni;iles or exclude them ? 0?^ either 
supposition, half the sovereigns of Europe must be usurpers, reigning in de- 
fiance fif the conimnnds of iieavcn, and niiglit be ju.stly disposse.sseil by the 
rightful heirs. 'I'liese absurd doctrines received no countenance from tlie 
Old Testament ; for in the Old Testament we read that the chosen jieople 
were blamed and punislied for desiiing a king, and that they were afterwards 
commanded to withdraw their alh-gianee from him. Their whole history, 
far from favouring tlie notion that laimogeniturc is of divine institution, 
would rather seem to indicate that youiKjrr brothers are under the special pro- 
tection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of 
Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse, nor Solomon of David. In- 
deed, the order of senioiity among children is seldom strictly regarded in 
countries where polygamy is practised." 

Examples, actual cases, which he lays down in such numbers, 
often have the effect of a jiroof, being the l. tnal foundation of the 
general proposition. His illustration in the debate on the Anatomy 
Hill of the assertion tliat the poor sufier more by bad surgery than 
the rich, has something of this effect : — 

''Who suffers by the bad state of the I.'ussian sehool of surgery? The 
Em]ieror Kicliolas? By no means. Tiie whole evil falls on tlie pea.santry. 
If the ediH-atioii of a surgeon should become very expensive, if the lees ot 
surge.ins should conse(iueiitly rise, if the sujiply of regular surgeons should 
diminish, the sufferers would be, not the rich, but the poor in our country 
Pillages, who would again be left to mountebanks, and barbers, and old 
women, and ciiarms, and quack medicines." 

Perhaps the best example of his irresistible use of facts to en- 
force his views is to be seen in his speeches on the proposals to 



1^^ 



128 THOMAS BABIXGTON MAC AULA T. 

extend Copyright. He runs over the principal men in Eng'ish 
literature, and examines how the law would have operated with 
them. Would it have induced Dr Johnson to labour more assidu- 
ously had he known that a bookseller, whose grandfather had pur- 
chased the copyright of his works from his residuary legatee Black 
Frank, would be in 1841 drawing large profits from the monopoly 1 
Would it have induced him to give one more allegory, one more 
life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal 1 

Very often his concrete c()mparis(ms are of the nature of argu- 
ments by analogy. His speech on the war with China, defending 
the Government from the charge of having brought on the war by 
mismanagement, aliounds in comparisons of this sort. One of the 
charges was that the instructions sent to the suj)erintendent were 
vague and meagre, to which Macaulay replied that it would be 
pernicious meddling to attempt to direct in detail the action of a 
functionary fifteen thousand miles off: — 

"How indeed is it possible that tliey should send him directions as to the 
details of his administration ? Consider in what a state the afi'airs of this 
country would be if tliey were to be conducted according to directions Iranied 
by the ablest statesnian residing in Bengal. A despatch goes hence asking 
for instrnctions while London is illuminating fm' the peace of Amiens. The 
instructions arrive when the French army is encamped at Boulo<rne, and 
when the whole island is up in arms to repel invasion. A despatch is written 
asking for instructions when Buonaparte is at Elba. The iiistructioiis come 
when he is at the Tuilleries. A (lesjiatch is written asking for instructions 
when he is at the Tuilleries. The instiacti'ins come when he is at St Helena. 
It would lie just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern Eng- 
land at Calcutta. " 

Here we have substantially an argument by analogy. Another 
of the charges brought against Government was, that they made 
no exertion to suppress the opium trade. This Macaulay met with 
the assertion that it was impossible, supporting his assertion with 
the following plausible parallel : — 

" In England we have a preventive service which costs us half a million 
a-year. ^Ve emiilny more than fifty cruisers to guard our coasts. We have 
six thousand effective men whose business is to intercept snuigglers. And 
yet . . . the ([uantity of brandy which comes in without paying duty is 
known to be not less than six hundred thousand gallons a-year. Some 
people think that the quantity of tobacco which is imjjorted clandestinely 
is as great as the quantity which goes through the custom-house. . . . 
And all this, observe, has been done in spite of the most effective preventive 
service that, I believe, ever existeil in the world. . . • If we know any- 
thing about the Chinese government, we know this, that its coast-guard is 
neither trusty nor ellicient ; and we know that a coast-guard as trusty and 
as efficient as our own wouhl not be able to cut olT conununication lietween 
the merchant longing for silver and the smoker longing for his jiipe. " 

Any attempt at prevention, he says further, would turn the 
smugglers into pirates — 



rERSUASION. 129 

" Have not similar causes repentodly prodm-cil siniil ir cfTects ? Do we not 
know that the jealous vigilance with wliich Spain excliitlcd tlie sliips of other 
nations IVoin lier tvaiisatlantic possessions tiiiin-d njeu wlio would otherwise 
have been honest niereliant adventurers inio iuiccaneers ? The SMUie causes 
which raised up one race of buccaneers in the Gulf of Mexico would soon 
have raised up another in the China sea." 

The same sense of the effect of dealing with propositions in the 
concrete ap[)ears in another form. He is anxious to reduce vague 
and general charges to a statement of facts, witli a view to show 
the insiilliciency of the real grounds. Thus he reduces Sir James 
Graham's charge of Goveriimeut maladministration in China to 
the following : — 

" The charge against them therefore is this, that they did not give stich 
copious and particular directions as were sutticient, in every pos>ii)le emer- 
gency, for the guidance of a functionary who was fifteen thousand miles oti." 

His hal)it of immediately looking to the facts when a generality 
was asserted, often enabled him to point out that certain circum- 
stances had not been taken into account. Thus, in the Reform 
debate, a member argued that it was unjust to disfranchise Aid- 
borough, because the borough was as populous now as in the days 
of Edward 111., when it was constituted an elective borough. True, 
replied Macaulay, but it ought to be much more populous now than 
then, if it would keep its position. Other towns iiave been grow- 
ing enormously, while Aldborough has been standing still. 

(4.) Though habitually gladiatorial, and always eager to con- 
vince by argument, he shows ciui.siderable tact in recommending 
his own view to the feelings of the persons addressed. 

Throughout his History he seeks favour for his own favourites by 
representing them as the champions of English glory. His account 
of Cromwell may be studied for artful touches of this sort. One 
of his most splendid paragraphs is his account of the supremacy of 
England during the Protectorate. In ecpially enthusiastic terms 
he celebrates the superiority of Cromwell's pikemen : — 

"The banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride when they saw 
a brigade of their countrymen, outnuuibered by foes and ab:indoued by 
allies, drive before it in headlong rout tli(^ llnest infantry of Spain, and force 
a ))a,ssage into a counterscarp which had just beeu pronounced impregnable 
by the ablest of the marshals of France." 

In the Reform debates his principal card was the fear of pro- 
voking the people to a revolution. Again and again he reiterated 
that there were grounds for such a fear. When Lord John Russell 
hinted at the danger of disappointing the expectations of the 
nation, he was accused of tlneatening the House. Macaulay 
defended the obnoxious expression as quite " jiarliamentary and 
decorous," and repeated his own belief in the reality of the 
danger : — 



130 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

"I, sir, do entertain great appreliensinn for the fate of my country. I 
do in my conscirnce believe tlint unless the plan jn'oposcd, or some similar 
pliin, be .speedily adopted, pn at and terrilile ealannties will bef ill us. En- 
tertaining tliis opinion, 1 tliink myself bound to state it, not as a threat, but 
as a. reason." 

In more than one of the debates he held up the French Revolu- 
tion as a warning : — 

" The French nobles delayed too long any concession to the popular 
demands. Because they resisted reform in 17S3, they had to resist revolu- 
tion in 1789. They would not endure Turgor, and they had to endure 
Robespierre." 

In one speech he drew a vivid picture of the destruction of the 
nobility, and asked — 

" Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished, 
their escutclieous defaced, their piirks wasted, their palaces dismantled, tlieir 
heritages given to strangers? Because tliey had no sympathy with tlie 
people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the jiride and 
narrowness of their hearts, they called tliose whose warnings might have 
saved them theorists and S])eculatois ; because they refused all coucession 
until the time had arrived when no coucession would avaiL" 



CHAPTER IIL 



THOMAS CARLYLE, 

1795—1880. 

Thomas Caklyle, " The Censor of the Age," as he has been 
Ciilled, was an author by profession. In his famous petition on 
the Copyright Bill, written in 1839, he described himself as "a 
writer of hooks." 

He was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, on the 24th of 
December 1795. His father was a mason in that village, after- 
wards a peasant farmer near it ; sprung from strong and turbulent 
I'orderers, himself respected for his uprightness, thoroughness of 
industry, and a certain sarcastic energy of speech. Of this cold, 
stern, ujmght father, wliose " heart seemed as if walled in," and of 
his mother, to whom he was warmly attached, Carlyle has left a vivid 
picture in his ' Reminiscences.' 

Thomas, the eldest son of a family of nine, received the book 
education common to hundreds of young Scotchmen in the same 
condition of life. He was taught to read by his mother and the 
village schoolmaster ; taught the rudiments of Latin by the minis- 
ter of his sect : then, after some training in the higher branches of 
learning at the burgh school of Annan, he proceeded to the Univer- 
sity (if Edinburgh. 

When he entered the University, he had not quite completed his 
fifteenth year. Some of his professors were men of note : Dunbar, 
Professor of Greek; Leslie, Professor of Mathematics; Playfair, 
Professor of Natural Philosophy ; Thomas Brown, Professor of 
Logic and Moral Philosophy. Young Carlyle was a hard student 
He applied himself diligently to classics. To Brown's lectures he 
gave little attention, having a strong distaste for the analytic mode 
of dealing with mind, but the lectures in science he mastered thor- 



132 THOMAS CARLYLE, 

onghly : natural liking for the subject, or the professor's enthu- 
siasm, or accident, led him to make mathematics his principal 
study. He prosecuted the high mathematics for a long time with 
the greatest ardour. It was in his devotion to this subject that he 
first injured his naturally robust health. He became a mathemat- 
ical teacher, and at one time was a candidate for the Professorship 
of Astronomy in Glasgow. Traces of these studies appear not 
only in his figurative allusions, but in an amount of scientific 
method far beyond what is generally found in writers of high 
imagination. 

But it was outside the range of academical studies that the 
young student's principal and most profitable work lay. He was 
the oracle of a small band of youths, poor like himself, and ambi- 
tious of literary distinction, who read extensively in the Univer- 
sity library, and discussed what they read with free enthusiasm. All 
of them seem to have predicted future greatness for (Jarlyle. To 
one "foolish flattering" prediction of this kind he replied, in his 
nineteenth year, in the following characteristic strain : " Think 
not, because I talk thus, I am careless of literary fame. No ; hea- 
ven knows that, ever since I have been able to form a wish, the 
wish of being known has been the foremost. Oh, Fortune ! thou 
that givest unto each his portion in this dirty planet, bestow (if 
it shall please thee) coronets, and crowns, aud principalities, and 
purses, and pudding, and powers, upon the great and noble and fat 
ones of tlie earth. Grant me, that with a heart of independence, 
unyielding to thy favours and unbending to thy frowns, I may 
attain to literary fame ; and though starvation be my lot, I will 
smile that I have not been born a king." 

Although, thirty years later, Carlyle wrote scornfully about " the 
goose goddess which they call Fame ! Ach Gott!" — this youthful 
rhodomontade gives the key to the spirit of his future struggles. 
For nearly a quarter of a century he laboured till his ambition was 
attained ; but he held to it with fierce energy, even when starva- 
tion stared him in the face ; and he obtained fame at last on his 
own terms, without any sacrifice of his independence. 

It was to teaching that he first turned himself for a livelihood. 
In the end of May 1814 he quitted Edinburgh, having gone through 
the usual curriculum in arts ; and, by competitive trial at Dum- 
fries, got the teachership of mathematics in the bnrgh school of 
Annan, where, as we have mentioned, he had himself been a scholar. 
After two years' service in that post, he was, through the recom- 
mendation of his Edinburgh professors, offered the teachership of 
mathematics and classics in the burgh school of Kirkcaldy, and 
held that appointment also for about two years. In Kirkcaldy he 
made the intimate acquaintance of Edward Irving, who, like him- 
self, had been a schoolboy at Annan, and who for some years 



LIFE. l'6'6 

was master of a "venture school" in Kirkcaldy, known as "The 
Academy." 

The time spent by Carlyle in schoolmastering, and its probable 
influence on his habits of thought anil feeling, have been a little 
exaggerated. He never liked it, and uas barely three-and-twenty 
when he gave it up. In the end of 1818 he left Kirkcaldy, and 
went across to Edinburgh, with no definite prosj)ects, but with a 
vague notion of trying to live by literature. He spent some three 
years in Edinburgh, mainly in what he would call "stony-ground 
husbandries," the three gloomiest years of liis life — out of health, 
troubled in mind, finding comfort only in a "sacred defiance" of 
death as the worst that could happen. His only known literary 
work daring tho.se years was the composition of certain articles for 
Brewster's ' Edinburgh Encyclopedia.' During this period also he 
resumed his reailiug in the University library; extended his know- 
ledge of Italian, Spanish, and especially German ; and devoured 
extraordinary numbeis of books on history, poetry (in a moderate 
degree), romance, and general information as to all countries, and 
all things of popular interest. In 1822 he became tutor to Charles 
Buller, an appointment that relieved him from a good deal of dis- 
tasteful drudgery, and left him time for literary plans. 

In 1823 he sent to the ' London Magazine' the first instalment 
of his 'Life of Schiller.' In 1824 his publications were numerous; 
he finished his ' Life of Schiller,' and produced a translation of 
* Legendre's Geometry,' with an original Essay on Proi)ortion, as 
■well as his first notable work, the translation of ' Wilhehn Meister.' 
During the next two years, having broken off his connection with 
the Bullers, he laboured at. translations from the German, "honest 
journey-work, not of his own suggesting or desiring." ]n 1825 his 
Schiller appeared in a separate form. 

The most memorable incident in those years was Carlyle's ac- 
quaintance with the remarkable woman who afterwards became 
his wife. Miss Jane Welsh, only daughter of Dr \\elsh, a lineal 
descendant of John Knox. The marriage took place in 1826, after 
three years of intellectual courtshiji, and did not prove a hajipy one 
for the lad)'. A brilliant, clever, sjirightly Moman, made much of l)y 
her father as an only child, and humoured by him in her love for 
literature, she despised commonplace suitors of her own degree, 
and was attracted by the force of Carlyle's unconventional talk in 
sjiite of his rugged exterior. She " married for ambition," as she 
afterwards said, and her discernment of Carlyle's power was ultim- 
ately fully justified, but she had not calculated rightly the extent 
of the bitter sacrifices she had to make for the companionship. 
That her life was not so wholly joyless as might ap]iear from her 
jiublished letters, we may well imagine; but as the household 
slave of a man of genius ahsorbcd in his work, habitually gloomy 



134 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and irritable, taking all her sacrifices as matters of ordinary duty, 
never ie(J0;j,nisinn- them as sacrifices, ruthlessly rebuking her weak- 
nesses, anil making no acknowledgment of her ministrations to his 
comfort, her lot was far from cheerful. She did not and could 
not understand before actual experience the meaning of "marrying 
for ambition" a man with an ambition so hungiy and ruthless as 
Carlyle's. 

For some two years after his marriage Carlyle lived in Edin- 
burgh, drudging at literature and casting about for some settled 
employment, such as a professorship. Then, in 1828, much against 
Mrs Carlyle's wish, finding neither pleasure nor profit in Edin- 
burgh society, he retired to Craigenputtoeh, a small property 
belonging to his wife, situated about a day's journey east of his 
native Ecclefechan. At Craigenputtoeh he lived about six years. 
His manner of life he described in an often-quoted letter to Gnethe, 
with whom he had been brouglit into corresjiondence by his trans- 
lation of ' Wilhelni jNIeister.' He had retired to his own "bit of 
earth" to "secuie the independence through which he could be 
enabled to remain true to himself." "Six miles from any one 
likely to visit him," " in the loveliest nook of Scotland," he yet 
kept himself informed of what was passing in the literary world ; 
he had "})iled upon the table of his little liorary a whole caitload of 
Frencli, German, American, and English journals and periodicals." 
" True to himself " Carlyle undoubtedly was then as at all times, 
setting his face with ferocious resolution against imitation of any 
style or vein of thought or sentiment that could be called popular, 
not merely determined to deliver his message in his own way, but 
as yet undecided what his message was to be, and searching for one 
with desperate sighing and groaning. Jeffrey took a warm inter- 
est in himself and his wife, and implored, scolded, and argued in 
a vain endeavour to persuade him to submit to commonplace taste. 
Carlyle would write in his own way and on his own themes or not 
at all. The consequence was, that all through those years he was 
in constant dithculties with puljlishers and editors, and in the 
direst pecuniary straits, all the more that he gave generous help 
to a younger biother, and refused to touch a penny of his wife's 
income as long as her mother was alive. The articles reprinted in 
the three first volumes of his '.Miscellanies' were written at this 
time. Several literary plans had to be abandoned because no 
publisher would take them up. I'he idea occurred to him of 
taking his own struggle for existence as a theme, and he gave in 
'Sartor Itesartus' his passionate commentary on a world in which 
he found it so hard to live in his own way, and which seemed to 
him so full of matter for scornful laughter and pity and indigna- 
tion. This strangely original work, in which Carlyle was much 
more defiantly singular than he had ever been before, was re- 



LIFE. 1 35 

jccted by several publishers, but at length siiw the light as a 
series of articles in ' Fraser's Magazine,' 1S33-34, and its singular- 
ity and force drew upon the author more attention than he had 
hitherto received. 

In 1S34 he removed to the London suburb now associated with 
his name, 'i'he " Seer of Chelsea" is now as familiar a synonym 
as " the glorious Dreamer of Highgate." But when he came to 
London, it was almost as a last desperate move. He was known 
to the dispensers of literary work only as an obstinately peculiar 
and fantastic individuah Li America he was more quickly ap- 
preciated. Emerson and others pressed him to settle there, and his 
'Sartor' and his occasional essays were reprinted at Boston in 1836. 
His first success in London was as a lecturer. In 1837 he gave to 
"a very crowded, yet a select, au lience" in London a course of 
six public lectures on German literature; in 1838 a course of 
twelve " On the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods 
of European Culture;" in 1839 a course on "the Revolutions of 
Modern Europe;" in 1840 a course on "Heroes, Hero-Wonship, 
and the Heroic in History."^ These lectures made a sensation 
in fashional)le literary circles; ihe rugged English, the Scotch 
accent, the emphatic sing song cadence, combined with the lofti- 
ness anil originality of the matter, drew crowds to hear the new 
prophet. " It was," said Leigh Hunt, "as if some Puritan had 
come to life again, liberalised by Cerman philosophy and his own 
intense reflections and experiences." 

Meanwhile his master-works began to appear. During his first 
year's residence in London, he had written with fiercely earnest 
labour the first volume of a work on the French Revolution. 
There is not a more deeply interesting chapter in literary history 
than Mr Fronde's account of the accidental destruction of this 
manuscript, "written as with his he;iit's blood," and of the almost 
unconquerable repugnance and heroic eflbrt with which Carlyle 
set himself to do the work over a^ain. At last, in 1837, the 
'French Revolution' appeared, and Cailyle seciu-ed the fame for 
which he had wrestled so lung. Henceforw-ard publishers let him 
de iver his message as he liked. In 1838 'Sartor Res.-.rtus,' 
"hitherto a mere aggregate of Magazine articles," emerged from 
its " bibliopolic difficulties," and became a book. The same year 
witnessed tlie first edition of his ' Miscellanies.' In 1839 he 
published, under the title of 'Chartism,' his first attack on the 
corruption of modern society, and the futility of all extant projects 
of reform. In 1843 ^^^ fo'lowed up 'Chartism' with 'Past and 
Present.' In 1S45 ^^^ published his 'Cromwell's Letters and 
Speeches,' which met with a more rapid sale than any of his pre- 
vious works. In 1850 he returned, in his ' Latter-Day Pamphlets,' 

1 The 1.1st course only lias lieeii piiMislicil. 



136 THOMAS CACLYLE. 

to the conditiiin of society, pouring forth unmeasured contempt on 
"The Nigger Question," "The Present Time," " Model Prisons," 
"Downing Street," "Tlie New Downing Street," "Stump OratDrs," 
"Parliaments," "Hudson's Statue," "Jesuitism." Next year 
appeared his ' P>iograuhy of John Sterling.' Thereafter lie was 
occupied exclusively with his great historical work, 'The History 
of Frederick II., commonly called The Great.' The two first vol- 
umes were published in 1858, other two in 1862, and in 1865 the 
work was completed. 

In the session of 1865-66 he was elected Lord Rector by the 
students of Edinburgh University; and on April 2, 1866, de- 
livered to a crowded and enthusiastic audience his famous Instal- 
lation Address. He was not suffered long to enjoy the most 
affecting public manifestations that have ever honoured his name. 
His wife died before his return to London: in the very hour of 
his public trium]>h came the stroke of calamity ; and the old 
man mourned that "the light of his life was quite gone out." 
Not till after her death did he learn how much she had suffered 
for him. 

He published nothing of importance during the last fifteen years 
of his life. Now and then he made his voice heard on questions 
of passing interest. In 1867 he wrote for ' Macmillan's Magazine' 
a very gloomy anticipation of the consequences of the Reform 
Bill, with the suggestive title, "Shooting Niagara, and After 1" 
In 1869 he sent to the newspapers a letter on his favourite 
"Emigration." During the war between France and Germany, 
he wrote to rejoice over the French defeat, and quoted history to 
show that it had been well deserved. His last publication was a 
series of artieles on the Portraits of John Knox and the Early 
Kings of Norway, which appeared as a small volume in 1875. -^^ 
died at Chelsea, February 5, 18S1. 

In his Rectorial Address at Edinburgh, being then a patriarch 
of seventy, he addressed a kindly warning to his youthful hearers 
against the physical dangers of too severe study. His own stnmg 
frame and great constitutional robustness were early impaired by 
injudicious closeness of application. During the whole of his later 
life he suffered from dysjiepsia. It says much for the native energy 
of his system that, in sjiite of this depressing — if not debilitating 
— disorder, he accomplished such an amount of solid work, retain- 
ing his powers to old age, and writing with unabated vigour at 
the extreme age of seventy. He had sufficient strength of will to 
sustain what De Quincey always recognised as the best remedy for 
Ida "appalling stomachic derangement" — namely, regular habits 
of active exercise. 

We spoke of Macaulay as a man whose intellectual energies were 



CHAKACTER. 137 

to some extent dissipated upon various fields of exertion. Carlyle's 
energies were concentrated with uni)arulleled intensity tijion liis 
books. For nearly lialf a century lie gave the best part of liis 
working? time to literature, pursuing his appointed tasks with fre- 
quent fits of stn)ng distaste, but with unulterable steadiness of 
aim. Probably more intellectual force has been spent upon the 
production of Carlyle's books than upon the productions of any 
two other writers in general literature. 

His powers of memory were not of the same universally and 
immediately dazzling order as Macaulay's. Every ])erson that 
met Macuulay went away in astonishment at "the stores which 
Lis memory had at instantaneous command." In private society 
Carlyle impressed his hearers by talk very much resembling the 
general texture of his writings. He had not Macauluy's wide- 
ranging readiness of recollection, could not quote with the same 
instantaneous fluency, and could not trust his memory so confi- 
dently without a wrilten note. Again — to com[)are him in this 
particular with De Quincey — he does not strike us as possessing 
great multifarious knowledge. He makes comparatively few allu- 
sions beyond the circle of subjects that he has specially studied. 
His scrupulous love of accuracy may have hampered the flowing 
display of his knowledge; but within the circles of his special 
studies, his memory is pre-eminently wonderful. To hold in mind 
the varied materials of his vivid historical pictures was a stram of 
retentive force immeasurably greater than was ever required of 
either De Quincey or Macaulay for the production of their works. 
His memory is singularly catholic as regards the kind of thing 
remembered ; he remembers names, dates, scenical groupings, and 
the characteristic gestures and expressions of whole societies of 
men, to all a])pearance with equal fidelity. 

Carlyle is sometimes loosely spoken of as a great "thinker," but 
his power does not lie in the regions of the dry understanding, in 
analysis, argument, or practical judgment. In his youth he was 
distinguished as a mathematician ; l)ut when he turned to the study 
of men, he took fire : on anything connected with man, he felt too 
profoundly to reason well. l!is whole nature rose in rebellion 
against cold-bloode I analysis and matter-of-fact argument. In his 
works he is never tireil of sneering at " Philosophism," the "Dis- 
mal Science" of Political Economy, "Attorney Logic," and suchlike. 
He had a natural anti]»athy to such ways of aj)proaching men and 
the aflfaifs of men. He was naturally incapable of De Quincey's 
pursuit of character or meaning into minute shades, and of Macau- 
lay's elaborate refutations by copious instance and analogy. Take, 
for exanq)le, his Hero-worship. Instead of analysing, as De Quin- 
cey might have done, the elements of greatness in his heroes, or of 
producing, as Macaulay might have done, argumentative arrays of 



138 THOMAS CAULYLE. 

actual undeniable achievements as the proof of their title to admira- 
tion, he exercises his ingenuity in representing their greatness under 
endless varieties of striking images; the hero is "a flowing light- 
fountain of native original insight, of manhood and heroic noble- 
ness;" " at all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him;" 
"a messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidinga 
to us." 

Though deficient as an analyst and as a debater, he shows in 
other forms abundance of the elementary intellectual force i)rin- 
cipally concerned in analysis and debate. Had his feelings been 
less dominant, he might have developed into a profound professor 
of what he calls the Dismal Science, and might even, with unjjre- 
cedentetl persuasive skill, have converted the world to the practice 
of Malthusianism. But feeling and natural impulses chained his 
strong intellect to their service; and instead of scientific analysis 
and solid argument, the result is a splendour and originality of 
imagery and dramatic grouping that entitle him to rank near 
Shakspeare, or with whoever may be placed next to our received 
ideal of the incomparable. 

A man of feeling and impulse, his feelings and impulses were 
very different from what we find in natures constitutionally fitted 
for enjoyment, in the born lovers of existence, his own " eupeptic " 
men. In his works we encounter something very difterent from 
Macaulay's uniform glow of buoyant hopefulness, hearty belief in 
human progress, and confident plausible judgment of men and 
events. We find gloomy views of man and his destiny, a stern 
gospel of work, judgments passed in strong defiance of conven- 
tional standards, and towering egotism under the mask of humour. 

In anotlier aspect he strikes us as offering a considerable contrast 
to De Quincey. The Opium-Eater, though not by any means a 
eupeptic man, was an avowed Eudajmonist, " hated an inhuman 
moralist like unboiled opium," and was a lover of repose and of 
the softer emotions. In Carlyle, on the contrary, tlie central and 
commanding emotion is Power ; he is all for excitement and energy. 
We have already seen the difference in their ways of viewing great 
niL'n ; that De Quincey admires them in a passive attitude, while 
Carlyle is raised by the thought of their achievements to the 
loftiest heights of ideal energy. We have no means of knowing 
how Carlyle would have enjoyed the actual contiol of human 
beings as a commander or a civic ruler^like Cromwell, Frede- 
rick, Mirabeau, or Dr Francia ; but he shows a most thorough 
enjoyment of commanding authority in the imagination. His 
thirst for the ideal enjoyment seem insatiable, and drives him 
to exaggerate the influence of his chosen heroes, and to suppress 
and understate the infiuence of their coadjutors. " Universal 
History, the history of what man has accompished in this world, 



CHARACTER. 139 

is at l)()ttom the history of the Great }ih-n wlio liave worked there." 
"Ail things that we see standing accoinplislied in the world are 
properly the outer material result, the ])ractical realisation and 
emliodinient of thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into 
the world : the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be 
considered, were the history of these." 

A good way of represeuting the diflference between two such 
writers is to IodIv through their works, and piece together tlieir 
conceptions of the universe in their higliest moods of sublimity. 
De Qiiincey sees midsummer moving over the heavens like an 
army with banners ; hears cathedral music in the confused noise 
of niountaiu-striams ; loves to contemplate calmly in the mirror 
of such minds as "Walking Stewart's" the whole mighty vision of 
the sentient universe, oriental pageantry, revolutionary convul- 
sions, civic splendour; and occasionally lifts his mind to travel iu 
the same calm way through the illimitable grandeurs of astronomi- 
cal S{)aces. Contrast this repose of attitude with the violent ex- 
citement of Carlyle's favourite conceptions : the world pictured as 
a dark simmering pit of Tophet, wild puddle of nmddy infatua 
tions, of irreconcilable incoherences, bottomless universal hypoc- 
risies, an ungenuine phantasmagory of a world, full of screechings 
and gibberings, of foul ravening monsters, of meteor-lights and 
Bacchic dances, the wild universe storming in upon man infinite 
vague-menacing. 

Carlyle's love of powerful excitement finds a magnificent outlet 
in his humour and derision. Psychologists tell us that the basis 
of laughter is a sudden accession of pleasure in the shape of the 
special elation of power and superiority. Carlyle avowedly ai> 
proves of laughter — sets up hearty laughter as a criterion of 
genuine human worth ; and, as we sliall see when we come to 
his qualities of style, lie is self-indulgent, if not intemperate, in 
the exercise of his own sense of the ludicrous. His mirth is robust 
— as he says himself, in describing the Norsemen, " a great broad 
Brobdiiignag grin of true humour." 

His pathos is of the kind that goes naturally with such excessive 
indulgence in the excitement of power. Wherever there is a height 
there is a corresponding hollow; the lover of intoxicating excite- 
ment too surely p-iys the penalty in intervals of exhaustion, of 
uimtterable depression and despondency. With all his fire, his 
gos[)el of work, and his denunciation of un[)rodnctive sentimen- 
tality, Carlyle has his inevitable fits of the melting mood. We 
I shall see that at times he is overpow ered with sadness at the 
I thought of human miseries and peri)lexities, and that he bemoans 
with more than Byronic despondency the irresistible movement of 
time. 

We have already spoken of the amount of intellectual effort 



110 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

spent upon the production of our author's books. The grand duty 
of work that he preaches with such earnestness he was no less 
earnest in performing. He gathered his materials not only with 
painful lalumr, but with scrupulous respect for minute fact. This 
for him was but a small part of the toil of writing history ; when 
the materials were collected, a much larger draught of his impa- 
tient energy was spent in filling the dry facts with human interest. 
The mere writing was never an easy or happy task for him : he 
wrote at white heat, with feverish elfort, with all his f;iculties 
intensely concentrated. If we take any page of his 'French 
Revolution ' and try to conceive how it was built up, and what 
care was expended on the separate elements of it before the 
whole was "Hung out of him," as he said, in the final convulsive 
effort of composition, we come as near as we can to realising 
what labour went to the making of Carlyle's books. 

He does not seem to have done his work with the fitful irreg- 
ularity of Christopher North, but rather to have acted on the 
Virgilian plan of so much manuscript each daj'. Such work as 
his could hardly have been accomplished without the steadiest 
concentration of endeavour. It is known that in composing the 
'French Revolution' he set himself daily to produce so much, and 
in all probability he composed his other works on the same rigid 
method. In this res])ect he is a much safer model to the general 
run of students than the versatile and discursive Macaulay. 

Opinions. — Carlyle's doctrines are the first suggestions of an 
earnest man, adhered to with unreasoning tenacity. As a rule, 
with no exception that is worth naming, they take account mainly 
of one side of a case. He was too impatient of difficulties, and 
had too little respect for the wisdom and experience of others, to 
submit to be corrected ; opposition rather confirmed him in his 
own opinion. Most of his practical suggestions had alieady been 
tried and found wanting, or had been made before and judged im- 
]>racticable upon grounds that he did not or would not understand. 
His modes of dealing vt^ith paujierism and crime were in full opera- 
tion under the despotisms of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. His 
theory of a hero-king, which means in practice an accidentally 
good and able man in a series of indifferent or bad desj)Ots, h;is 
been more frequently tried than any other political system : Asia 
at this moment contains no government that is not despotic. His 
views in other dejiartments of knowledge also, are chiefly deter- 
mined by the strength of unreasoning injpulses. 

This will appear when we state his opinions in some detail We 
throw them for convenience into a few familiar divisions. 

Psychology. — He disclaims the ordinary mental analysis. He 
speaks with great contempt of " motive-grinding." He sat through 



OPINIONS. 1 4 1 

Thomas Brown's lectures witli perpetual inward protest, declaring 
that he did not want the mind to be taken to pieces in that way. 

We need not therefore look in his writings for any large views 
of the mind, for any enunciation of doctiincs of a comprehensive 
kind. In his partiality for everything German, he adopts with 
unquestioning faith some Kantian and other transcendentalisma 
of German origin. His own original vieas of the mind are frag- 
mentary and somewhat fanciful. 

We may apply the title " Psychological " to some of his doc- 
trines abiiut the indissoluble union of certain qualities. For one 
example, take his theory of Laughter as the criterion of goodness. 
" Keaders," he says, " who have any tincture of Psychology, know 
. . . that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed 
can be altogether irreclaimably bad." Again, " Laughter, also, if 
it ciime from the heart, is a heavenly thing." As another example, 
take his doctrine that Intellect is the true measure of worth. 
" Human Intellect, if you ccmsider it well, is the exact summary 
of Human Worth." " A man of intellect, of real and not sham 
intellect, is by the nature of him likewise inevitably a man of 
nobleness." " The able man is definable as the born enemy of 
Falsity and Anarchy and the burn soldier of Truth and Order." 

Such doctrines are, it is hardly necessary to say, far from clear. 
Very bad men often laugh heartily enough, in the ordinary sense 
of the words; and very able men, in the ordinary sense of the 
word "able," are often very great scoundrels. Carlyle's unre- 
served admirers probably bring themselves to accept such dogmas 
by laying stress on the saving clauses, — " if it comes from the 
heart ;" " if you consider it well ;" and suchlike. But none of 
these clauses will save the doctrines if they are taken in the ordi- 
nary meaning of their words ; and one may well doubt whether 
greiit writers are to be allowed the privilege of throwing the 
ancient boundaries of words into confusion. 

Other examples of his habit of attaching laudatory ]iredicates to 
what he has a liking for, without much regard to the fitness of the 
api)lication, are such as the following : " All deep things are song. 
It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song ; as if all 
the rest were but wrappings and hulls ;" " You may see how a 
man would fight by the way in which he sings;" "'The imagi- 
nation that shudders at the hell of Dante,' is not that the same 
faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own*?" "Your genuine 
poet is the real Encyclopedist," &c. lirc. All these involve indif- 
ferent psychology, and they are but samples of more of the same 
kind. 

Elides. — Doctrines in Ethics we sliall keep as far as possible dis- 
tinct from doctrines in Theology ; although many of our author's 
doctrines are two-sided. 



142 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

(i.) According to Carlyle, the chief end of life is the perform- 
ance of Duty. He is full of contempt for the pursuit of happiness, 
and pours out his most indignant eloquence against the theory of 
life that would make happiness the end. "In all situations out of 
the Pit of Topliet, wherein a living man has stood or can stand, 
there is actually a jirize of quite infi)iite value jjlaced within his 
reach — namely, a Dnty for him tn do: this highest Gospel . . . 
forms tlie basis and worth of all other Gospels whatsoever." 

His stern creed allows no collateral support to the discharge of 
duty. If men labour in lio[)e of reward, they are still unconverted, 
still in darkness. They must recognise that they deserve nothing. 
To Methodism, " with its eye for ever turned on its own navel," 
and torturing itself witli the questions — 'Am I right, am I wrong 1 
Shall I be saved, shall I be danmed 1 ' — he gives the lofty advice — 
"Jf thou be a man, reconcile thyself" to the fact " that thou m-t 
wrong ; thou art like to l)e damned ;" "then first is the devouring 
Universe subdued under thee," and tliere breaks upon thee "dawn 
as of an everlasting morning." On the same principle of acknow- 
ledging utter wortlilessness, and recognising that nothing too bad 
can befall us, we are a^lvised — "Fancy that thou deservest to be 
hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only 
shot ; fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it 
will be a luxuiy to die in hemp." In short, our only consohition 
in life is to be the sense of doing our duty ; as regards everything 
else, we must expect nothing, lest we should be disappointed. 

(2.) But Duty is an abstraction, an empty Ideal : does Carlyle 
recommend any duties in j^aiticular ? Yes. 

The first great duty is the duty of Work — Action, Activity. 
This eminent feature in his preaching has been called "The 
Gospel of Labour." According to this gospel, all the "peopled, 
clothed, articulate- speaking, high - towered, wide -acred World" 
has been "made a world for us" by work; the individual that 
does not lend a hand fails in his duty as a denizen of the 
Universe. Man's greatest enemy is Disorder ; his most im- 
perative and crying duty is to subdue disorder, convert chaos 
into order and method; the able-bodied or able-minded man 
that stands idle deserves unsi)eakable contempt, — he is a dastard, 
a fool, a simulacrum ; he does not fulfil his destiny as a man. 
Wherefore, " Do thy little stroke of work; this is Nature's voice, 
and the sum of all the commandments, to each man." 

To the question, What is to be done 1 he answers peremptorily, 
*" Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest to 
be a dutj^" "Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest 
infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name. 
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might." He never recommends or brings prominently forward 



OPINIONS. 143 

cai 2 in the choice of a vocation ; he is so eager and impotuous 
ti) liave something done, that he has no thought of cautioning 
against tlie hasty adojttion (if unsuitable work. He evidently 
considers tliere is much more danger in idleness. We must " live 
and not lie sleeping while it is called to-day." " Something 
must be done, and soon." Doubt is removed only by activity. 

He upholils the dignity of work at all points. "All true work 
is religion." '■'■'■ Laiiorare est orare^ — work is worship." The 
"Captains of Industry" are the true aristocracy. The gruat army 
of workers, " Plough ers, Sjunners, Builders; Proi)liets, Poets, 
Kings; P)rindleys and Goetlies, Odins and Arkwriglits ;" — this 
grand host is "noble, every soldier in it; sacred, and alone 
noble." "Two men he honours, and no third" — "the toihvorn 
Craftsman who conquers the Earth," and "him who is seen 
toiling for the spiritually indispensable." 

He sets off his own Gospel of Work against other pretended 
Gospels. He despatches the Stoics in the person of Epictetus 
by telling them that " tlie end of man is an Action and not a 
TIio}(gld, though it were the noblest." He taunts those that 
make happiness the end of life with the declaration, that " the 
night once come, our unliappiness, our happiness — it is all 
abolished; vanished, clean gone; a thing that has been." "But 
our work — behold, that is not abolisheil, that has not vanished : 
our work, behold, it remains, or the want of it remains ; — for 
endless Times and Paternities, remains." He is also vigorous 
against what he calls sentimentalism, which he dubs " twin- 
sister to Cant." "The barreuest of all mortals is the senti- 
mentalist ; " " in the shape of work he can do nothing." 

Another great duty is the duty of Obedience. Not onl}' is 
obeying the best discipline for governing, and as such extolled 
in Abbot Samson, and recommended to the Duke of Logwood, 
but " Obedience is our universal duty and destiny ; wherein 
whoso will not bend must break." "^i'oo early and too thoroughly 
we cannot be trained to know that "Would in this world of ours 
is as mere zero to Should." Again to the same effect — "Obedi- 
ence is the primary duty of man. No man but is bound inde- 
feasibly with all force of obligation to obey." 

There is nothing peculiar upon the face of these precepts, except 
their strength ; they migjit almost stand in the Institutions of the 
Jesuits. Here and there throughout his works we meet with 
qualifications. He denounces the obedience of the Jesuits — 
" Obedience to what is wrong and false ? — good heavens ! there 
is no name for such a depth of human cowardice and calamity." 
It is the heroic, the divine, the true, that he would have ua 
obey. When the jiowers set over us are no longer anytliing 
divine, resistance becomes a deeper law of order than obedience. 



144 THOMAS CAKLYLK 

If we ask how we are to know the heroic, the divine, we are 
left to understand that it will make itself manifest. The true 
King " carries in him an authority from God, or man will never 
give it him." " He who is to be my Ruler, whose will is to 
be higher than my will, was chosen for me in heaven," 

Another duty is the duty of Veracity, of Sincerity as opposed 
to Cant, the duty of being Real and not a Sham. On these 
virtues and their opposites, on those that observe them and those 
that violate them, he expends much eloquence. The 'French 
Revolution' is almost a continued sermon on the evils of in- 
sincerity, hoUowness, quackery, and on the good of the corre- 
sponding virtues. And in none of his works can we read far 
without encountering some declamation on Truth, Sincerity, Real- 
ity, Falsehood, Cant, Puffery, Sham. 

On one point his preaching of Truth may mislead. He does 
not seem to think that Truth requires a man to make a frank 
and open declaration of his beliefs. For his own part, at least, 
he is very reticent as to his real opinions, on matters of leligion 
for instance; and he praises Goethe's example of wrapping up 
opinions in mysterious oracles. The fact would seem to be, that 
all his requirements of Veracity, Sincerity, Reality, are satisfied 
by one thing, the conscientious performance of one's appointed 
work. This, if we look beneath the gorgeous verbal oijuleuce 
of the preacher, would seem to be the whole duty of man. If 
he engages to cut thistles, let him cut them with all his might. 
If he engages to review authors, let him read their works con- 
scientiously. If he engages to write history, let him diligently 
search out its facts. 

His characteristic love of reality appears in his preference of 
Fact to Fiction, and his condemnation of Fine Art as Dilet- 
tantism. 

E eli( lion.— -WiH religious views are worded obscurely. To extract 
definite o])inions from his vague declamations on the subject, 
would inevitably be to misrepresent him. He intimated plainly 
enough that he had departed from the received orthodoxy of this 
country ; of this he made no secret. He himself gave up study- 
ing for the Scottish Church; and he records his opinion "in flat 
reproval " of John Sterling's resolution to take orders in the 
English Church. " No man of Sterling's veracity, had he clearly 
consulted his own heart, or had his own heart been capable of 
clearly responding, and not been dazzled and bewildered by 
transient fantasies and theosophic moonshine, could have under- 
taken this function." Elsewhere he pities Sterling in this "con- 
fused epoch of ours," with "the old spiritual highways and recog- 
nised paths to the Eternal, now all torn up and flung in heaps, 
submerged in unutterable boiling mud-oceans of Hypocrisy and 



onxioxs. 145 

Unbelievability, of brutal living Atheism and damnable dead 
putrescent Cant." But while he was thus severe alike on In 
titlelity and on Orthodoxy, lie never said with au approach 
to intelligibility what was his own belief. Mr Froude has 
rescued a fraguient written in 1852, and intended to expound 
more fully his thoughts on religion. But Carlyle had not gone 
far when he threw the work aside as unsatisfactory, and not 
adequately expressing his meaning. Jolin Sterling gives the 
following account of the Religion or No-Religion of the Sartor : — 

" Whnt we find everywhere, with an abundant use of tlie name of God, is 
tlie coui'eption of a forndess Inliiiitu wlietlicr in time or spnce ; of a liigh / 
inscnitidile Necessity, which it is the chief wisdom and virtue to sidjinit ^ 
to, wliii'h is tiie mysteiiuus impersonal base of all Existence — sliows itself 
ill the laws of every separate being's iiature, and for man in tlie shape of 
duty." 

We may perhaps rank among his religious opinions his accept- 
ance of Fichte's itlea that the '■^ true literary man" is "the world's 
Priest," "continually unfolding the Godlike to men," "sent hither 
especially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to 
us, this same Divine Idea." By way of defining the "true" man 
of letters, he says that "whoever lives not wholly in this Divine 
Idea is . . . no Literary Man." 

J'olitics. — His political views connect themselves partly with his 
ideas about Work, Reality, Sincerity, and suchlike; and jiartly 
with his llero-Kiug. All the miseries in this life are due to 
Idleness, Imposture, Unveracity. This he explicitly declares. 
" Quack -ridden ; in that one word lies all misery whatsoever. 
Spcciosity in all departments usurps the place of reality, thrusts 
reality away. . . . The quack is a Falsehood incarnate." 
He does indeed say elsewhere that "it is the feeling of injus- 
tice that is insupportable to all men;" but then he explains 
that injustice " is another name for disorder, for unveracity, 
unreality." This being so, what does he propose as remedies 
for iniposttire, unreality, itc. 1 We come upon two S[iecific reme- 
dies liitlden away under masses of declamation — emigration and 
education : emigration — to provide work for industrious men that 
can get no employment; education — for no stated reason. He 
simply recommends that "the mystery of al|ihal)etic letter should 
be imparted to all human souls in this realm." These are his 
only constructive views in politics, and they can hardly be said 
to be his.' For the rest, through his 'Chartism,' 'Past and Pres- 
ent,' ' Latter-Day Pamphlets,' and incidentally through his other 

1 Carlyle's chief plans for social reform were anticipated with groat exactness 
in Sir Thomas Moore's ' Utopia' (see p. 191). In my ' Cliaracteristics of English 
Poets' (p. 51, 2d. ed.), I have jioiiiteil out the close corrcspoinleiice between tlie 
social doctrines of Carlyle and the author 01 ' I'lers the I'lowman.' 

K 



146 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

works, he deplores tlie present state of things, denounces existing 
Kings, Aristocracies, Churches, and specially declaims against 
modern political movements. We did wrong to emancipate the 
negroes ; they find the necessaries of life cheap, work little, and 
let the sugar crops rot. We are too lenient with our criminals 
(see p. 158). He would take more work out of them. He 
Considers the transaction of Government business to be in a 
wretched state — hampered by " hlind obstructions, fatal indol- 
ences, pedantries, stupidities;" the Colonial Office "a world-wide 
jungle of red-tape, inhabited by doleful creatures." He would 
have none but men of ability in important posts. He dis- 
approves strongly of Parliaments elected by the people ; sneers 
at voting and "ballot-boxes"; asks whether a crew that settled 
every movement by voting would be likely to take a ship round 
Cape Horn. His ideal of government is to have a king (which 
he is constantly deriving from Can through Konig, and constantly 
translating "Ableman") at the head of affairs, and capable, 
obedient officials under him through all degrees of importance. 
How to realise the ideal he does not show ; and, as we have said, 
he takes no account of the endeavours of human communities 
towards this ideal, or of the uncontrollable forces that make it an 
impossibility. 

Criticism. — Of literary criticism in the ordinary sense of the 
word — in the sense of noting faults and merits of style, of showing 
what to avoid and what to imitate — Curlyle's writings contain 
next to nothing. He jmblished, as we have seen, under the title 
of ' Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,' remarks on various great 
men of letters — German, French, and English. But in these 
essays he does not occupy himself with style, or with the state- 
ment and illustration of critical canons. He deals rather with 
life, character, and opinions ; declaims on his favourite tojncs — 
Mysteiy, Reverence, Industry, Veracity ; rails at reviewers, logi- 
cians, historical philos()i)hers, sceptical philosophers, atheists, and 
other favourite objects of aversicm. He ranks authors, not accord- 
ing to their literary i)Ower, but according as they possess his car- 
dinal virtues. Goethe and Johnscm he extols above measure as 
being men of ]iower, and, at the same time, industrious, veracious, 
and reverential towards the mystery of the world. In considera'ion 
of this he passes over in Goeihe .some minor iniquities that else- 
where he condemns in the abstract, and passes over in .Johnson 
what some writers are pleased to call his intolerant prejudices and 
narrow canons of criticism. Voltaire and Diderot he finds indus- 
trious and veracious, but terribly wanting in reverence. Accord- 
ingly, he refuses to call them great men — finds in Voltaire adroit- 
ness rather than greatness, and styles him a master of persijlage. 

One or two of his i)recepts may be called literary, though they 



VOCABULARY. M7 

scarcely belong to minute criticism. He warns writers to beware 
of affectation ; to study reality in their style. One of tlie chief 
merits of Burns is his "indisputable air of reality." He further 
recommends them to write slowly; points out the evils of Sir 
Walter ,Sct)tt's extempore speed, and affirms that no great thing 
•was ever done without difficulty. Once more he stands up for a 
style that does n^t show its meaning at once, that becomes intel- 
ligible slowly and after much lal)orious stud)'. On this ground 
he praises Goctlie and Novalis, saying that no good book or good 
thing of any sort shows itself at first. Still another literary nation, 
already alluded to, is his idea that, in the present day, men should 
write prose and nut poetry, and history rather than fiction. 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 
Vocabulary. 

His command of words must be pronounced to be of the highest 
order. Among the few that stand next to Shakspeare he occupies 
a very high place. 

As his peculiar feelings are strongly marked, so are the special 
regions of his verbal copinusness. As a matter of Cdurse, he was 
specially awake to, and specially retained, expressions suiting his 
peculiar vein of strength, rugged sublimity, and every form of 
ridicule and contempt down to the lowest tolerable depths of 
coarseness. It would be interesting to collect the various fornix* 
that he uses to ex[)ress his sense of the confusion, the chaotic dis- 
order, of these latter days. An estimate of his abundance on that 
or any other of his favourite topics would give the reader the most 
vivid idea of his lingual resources. 

Having a stnmg natural bent for the study of character, he is a 
consummate master of the requisite jihraseoh'gy. In the language 
needful for describing character, he probably comes nearer Sbak- , 
speare than any other of our great writers. To be convinced of . 
this, we have only to look at his opulence in bringing out the leading 
features of such a man as John Sterling. Detween the subjective 
and the objective side, the language of feeling and the language of 
gesture and action, he is pretty evenly divided — a master of both 
vocabularies. 

In the use of Latinised terms, as against Saxon, he follows the 
Shakspearian tyjJC of an iudili'erent mixture. He does not particu- 
larly affect either extreme. Often on themes where other writers 
would use solemn words of Latin origin, he jirefers what Leigh 
Hunt calls a "noble simplicity," which others mii;lit call "profane 
familiarity"; but he employs liberally the Latinised vocabulary 
when it suits his purpose. His acquaintance with technical names 



148 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

is considerable. He makes frequent metaphorical and literal ap- 
plication of the language of mathematics and natural philosophy 
— his favourite studies wlieu a young man. He knew also the 
vocabulary of several industries, as well as of the social mechanism 
and institutions. 

Two circumstances in particular make his command of acknow- 
ledged English appear less than it really is. First, revelling in his 
immense force of Comparison or Assimilation, he shows a pro ligi- 
ous luxuriance of the figures of similarity — nicknaming personages, 
applying old terms to new situations, and suchlike. He often 
substitutes metaphorical for real names when the real are quite 
sufficient, and perhaps more suitable for the occasion. Now this 
habit, not to speak of its lowering the value and freshness of his 
genius by over doing and over affecting originality of phrase, often 
makes it appear as if he did not know the literal and customary 
names of things, and were driven to make shift with these allusive 
names. Another circumstance produces the same impression. He 
is most liberal in his coinage of new words, and even new forms of 
syntax. For this he was taken to task by his friend John Sterling,^ 
part of whose criticism we quote : — 

" A good deal of the language is positively barbarous. ' En- 
"vironment," ' vestural,' 'stertorous,' ' visuali.se 1,' 'complected,' 
"and^thers I think to be found in the first thirty pages, are 
" words, so far as I know, without any authority ; some of them 
" contrary to analogy ; and none repaying by their value the dis- 
" advantage of novelty. To these must be added new and errone- 
" ous locutions : 'whole other tissues ' for all the other, and similar 
" uses of the word whole ; ' orients ' for ■pearls ; ' lucid ' and 
" ' lucent ' employed as if they were different in meaning ; ' hulls ' 
" perpetually for coverings, it being a word hardly used, and then 
" only for the husk of a nut ; ' to insure a man of misapprehension;' 
"'talented,' a mere newspaper and hustings word, invented, I be* 
" lieve, by O'Connell. I must also mention the constant recur- 
"rence of some words in a quaint and queer connection, which 
" gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive mannerism to many 
"sentences. Of these the commonest otFender is 'quite'; which 
" appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of 
" emphasis ; but soon becomes wearisome. ' Nay,' ' manifold,' 
" 'cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational 
"or moral power), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if 
"in some uneasy dream, which does not rise to the dignity of 
" nightmare." 

In this passage, which Carlyle himself has given to the world, 
some of his most striking peculiarities of diction are noticed. To 
give an adequate view of his verbal eccentricities, would be no 
1 Carlyle's Life of Sterling, 276. 



SENTENCES. 149 

small labour. He extends the admitted licences of the language 
in every direction, using one part of sj)oech for another, verbs for 
nouns, nouns for verlis, adverbs and adjectives for nouns. His 
coinages often take the form of new derivatives— " benthamee," 
"amusee." He abuses the licence of giving plurals to al)stract 
nouns: thus "credibilities," "moralities," "theological philoso- 
phies," "transcendentalisms and theo'ogies." 

This excess of metaphors, new words, and grammatical licences 
is in favour of the reader's enjoyment, but not so much in favour 
of the student's instruction. It belongs to the inimitable, unre- 
prodncible }»art of the style ; the student cannot take the same 
liberties without bearing the charge of copying an individual 
manner, instead of deriving from the common fund of the language. 
So far it may stimulate to do likewise in one's own independent 
sphere; but close imitation is little better than parody, and imi- 
tation of any kind runs some danger of ridicule. 

Sentences. 

In his essays, particularly in the earlier essays and in his * Life 
of Schiller,' Carlyle shows none of the irregularity of structure 
that appears in his matured style. He has an admirable com- 
mand of ordinary English, and constructs his sentences to suit the 
motion of a massive and rugged, yet musical rhythm. 

Even in his essays, though himself writing with great care, he 
speaks slightingly of painstaking in the structure of sentences. 
\Vhat he really objects to is making sentences after an artificial 
model, of a particular length, or with a particular cadence, or with 
a particular number of members ; but he speaks as if he condemned 
all labour in the arrangement of words, and lays himself open to 
be quoted by any that would .shirk the trouble of making them- 
selves as intelligible as possilile to their readers. 

The sentences of his later manner we can describe in his own 
words. Among his editorial remarks on the style of Teufelsdroeckh 
is the following : — 

^ "Of his sentences iierlia]i.s not more tlian nine-teiitlis stand straight on 

-^t\wiv Ie<:cs ; the reniaiudcr ai'e in quite an^'ular attitudes, Imttresseil up by 

pidps (of ]iarent]iescs and tlashes), and ever with tliis or tlie other tag-rag 

Iiaiij^ing fmni tliem ; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite 

brokeu-backed and dismembered." 

From this figurative description one would suppose his sentences 
to be extremely involved and complicated. As a matter of fact, 
they are extremely simple in construction — consisting, for t^.e 
most part, of two or three co-ordinate statements, or of a short 
direct .statement, eked out by explanatory clauses either in apposi- 
tion or in the "nominative absulute" construction. These apposi- 



150 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

tion and absolute clauses are the " tag-rags," and it is in the con- 
nection of them with the main statement that we find tlie " dashea 
and parentheses." This character of his sentences is so obvious 
that few examples will suffice : — 

"Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever rejiresents Spirit to Spirit, is pro- 
perly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a seaso;i and to be laid off. 
Thus in this one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly uuderstood, is in- 
cluded all that men liave tliou-^lit, dreameil, done, ami been : the whole 
External Universe and wliat it holds is but Clothing ; and the essence of all 
Science lies in the Philosophy of Clothes." 

In this exphmation of the Philosophy of Clothes, the sentences 
are free from intricacy. The second sentence exemplifies a very 
common form with Carlyle in his less irregular moods, although he 
sneers at some sentence makers because they are very curious to 
have their sentence consist of three members ; yet he seems to 
have been himself a lover of this peculiar cadence. 

He very often uses the sentence of two members, one explana- 
tory of the other — avoiding the error of joining tliem by a con- 
junction. Thus in his description of John Sterling's mother : — 

"The mother was a woman of many household virtnes ; to a warm affec- 
tion for her children, she joined a degree of taste and inlelligeuce which is 
of juuch rarer occurrence." 

As examples of his practice of apposition, take the following : — 

"Biography is by nature the most unive:sally profitable, universally 
pleasant of all things : especially Biography of distinguished individuals." 

Speaking of John Sterling, he says : — 

" To the like effect shone something, a kind of childlike, half-embarrassed 
shimmer of expression, on his tine vivid countenance ; curiously mingling 
with its ardours and audacities." 

The Crown- Prince's imprisonment by his father is thus de- 
scribed : — 

" Poor Friedrich meanwhile has had a grim time of it these two months 
back ; left alone, in coarse brown prison-dress, within his four liare walls at 
Ciistrin ; in nninterru[ited, unfathomable colloquy with the Destinies and 
the Necessities there." 

In the following long sentence abundant use is made both of 
participle and of nominative absolute: — 

"Eminent swill of drinking, with the loud coarse talk supposable, on the 
part of Mentzel and consorts, did go on, in this manner, all afternoon ; in 
the evening drunk Rlentzel came out for air ; went strutting and staggering 
about ; emerging finally on the platform of some rampart, face of him huge 
and red as th.it of the foggiest rising Moon ; — and stood, looking over into 
the Lorraine Countiy ; belching oat a storm of oaths as to his t iking it, as 
to his doing this and that ; and was even flourishing his sword by way of 
accompaniment; when, lo, whistling slightly thiough the summer air, a 



SENTENCES. 1 5 1 

ri lie-ball froT/i some senti7 on the French side (writers say, it was a French 
diummiT, <(rowii impatient, ami snatcliing a sentry's piece) took the brain 
of liiin or the bi'lly of him : and he nishi'il down at once, a totally collapsed 
nionstur, and mere heap of dead ruin, never to trouble mankind more." 

We have seen that Macaulay's stj'le may in an especial degree 
be called artificial, inasmuch as he makes prodigal use of special 
artifices of composition. Carlyle is artificial in a <!iffercnt sense; 
at least he uses artilices of a different kind. His structure of 
sentence is extremely loose — is an extravagant antithesis to the 
period' x His studied ruggedness and careless cumulative method 
are incompatible with measured bahince of clause or sentence. We 
may say, with a rough approximation to trntli, that Macaulay's 
artificiality lies in departing from ordinary colloquial structure, 
Carlyle's in departing from the ordinary structure of written com- 
position. 

In his ' Life of Schiller,' and in his earlier essays, Carlyle builds 
up his composition with elaborate care in the ordinary literary forms. 
The following periodic sentences are constructed with Juhnsoniau 
formality, and with more than Johnsonian elaboration : — • 

"Could ambition always choose its own ])ath, and were will in human 
undertakings always synonymous with faculty, all truly ambitious men 
would be men of letters. Certainly, if we examine that love of jiower, 
which enters so largely into most practical cilculations — nay, which out 
Utilitarian friends have recognised as the sole end and origin, both motive 
and reward, of all eartiily enterjirises, animating alike the phihintlnopist, 
the concpieror, the money-changer, and the missionary — we shall linil that 
all other arenas of ambition, compared with this rich and boundless one of 
Literature, meaning tliercby whatever respects the iiroinulgatiou of Tlionght, 
are poor, limited, and inellectual. For dull, umeflective, merely instinctive 
as the ordinary man may seem, he has nevertheless, as a quite indispensable 
appendage, a head that in some (k^gree consiilers and computes ; a lamp or 
rushlight of luiderstanding lias been given him, which, through whatever 
dim, besmoked, and strangely dilira(ti\e media it may shine, is the ultimate 
guiding light of bis whole path : and here as well as there, now as at all 
times in man's history, Opinion rules the world." 

In this earlier style he sometimes also composes elaborate 
balanced parallels after the mo lei of Pope's comparison between 
Homer and A'irgil. We quote a short comparison between Alfieri 
and Schiller, where the imitatit)u of Poi)e is very apparent : — 

"Alfieri and Schiller were again unconscious competitors in the history 
of Mary Stuart. But the works liefore us give a truer specimen of their 
coin])arative merits. Schiller seems to have the greater genius ; Alfieri the 
more commanding character. Alfieri's greatness rests on the stern concen- 
tration of fieiy ])assion, under the dominion of an adamantine will : this was 
his own nnike of mind ; and he represents it with strokes in themselves de- 
void of charm, but in their union terrible as a ]>rophetic scroll. Schiller's 
moral force is commensurate with his intellectual gifts, and nothing more. 
Tlie mind of the one is like the ocean, beaunnil in its strength, smiling 
in the radiance of summer, and washing luxuriant and romantic shores: 



152 THOMAS CARLYJ-E. 

that of the other is like some black unfathomable lake placed far amid tha 
melancholy mountains; bleak, solitary, dcsobite ; but girdled with grim 
sky-jiiereinf( cliffs, ovei'shadowed with storms, and illuminated (inly by the 
red glare of tlie lii,ditning. Scliiller is niagidfifent iu his expansion, Alfieri 
is overpowering in his condensed energy ; the fii'st inspires us with greater 
admiration, the last with greater awe. " 

Paragraphs. 

In his more rhapsodical works, such as * Chartism ' and the 
'Latter-Day Pamphlets,' he is an indifferent observer of para- 
graph method. The reader is bewildered by the introduction of 
reflections without any hint of their bearing on the theme in hand. 
Some pages remind us of bis vivid desciiptions of chaotic inunda- 
tions that bide or sweep away all guiding-posts. Very seldom can 
we gatlier from the beginning of a paragraph wliat is to be its 
purport. No attempt is made to keep a main subject prominent. 
Whenever anything occurs to suggest one of his favourite themes 
of declamation, he embraces the opportunity, and lets his main 
business drop. 

This applies to his "prophetical" utterances, where his great 
natural clearness both in matter and in manner seems to be 
abandoned. In his history the case is very different. There his 
arrangement is almost the perfection of clearness. He is at pains 
to make everything easy to the reader. When the bearing of a 
statement is not apparent, be is careful to make it explicit. In 
each paragrai)h the main subject is for the most part kept promi- 
nent, — his defiance of ordinary syntax giving bim great facilities 
for a distinct foreground and background. He begins his para- 
graphs with some indication of their contents. Further, he is 
consecutive, and keeps rigidly to the point. 

Figures of Speech. 

Teufelsdroeckh is made to say, concerning style, that plain words 
are the skeleton, and metaphors ^ " the muscles and tissues and 
living integuments;" further, that his own style is "not without 
an apoplectic tendency." 

This might be quoted against Carlyle's own dictum, that "genius 
is unconscious of its excellence." His profusion of figurative lan- 
guage is perhaps the most striking monument of his originality 
and power. 

Figures of Similarity. — His similitudes, forcibly bunted out from 
every region of his knowledge of nature and of books, are not 
merely fanciful embellishments — most of them go to the making 
of his vivid powers of description. The character, or personal 

1 Metaphor is here probably used for "trope," as that word is defined in the 
Introduction. 



FIGUltES OF SPEKCIL 153 

appearance, or action of an individual ; the character of a nation, 
a state of society, a political situation ; the relative ])Osition of two 
bellii^erents, — everything, in short, that needs describing, lie brings 
vividly before us in its leading features by some significant simile 
or metaplior. 

This wealth of illustration is very noticeable in the description 
of cliaracter. For every personage of marked character he exorts 
himself to find a vivid similit\ide. " Acrid, corro.-^ive, as tlie si)irit 
of sloes and copperas, is Maiat, Friend of the People." Laf.iyette 
is "a thin constitutional Pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water 
turned to thin ice, whom no Queen's heart can love." The Coun- 
tess of Darlington, George I.'s fat mi.stress, is "a cataract of tallow, 
■with eyebrows like a cart-wheel, and dim coaly disks for eyes." 
She is contrasted with the Duchess of Kendal, the lean mistress, 
"])Oor old anatomy or lean human iiailrod," 

Every kind of situation, indivi lual or social, is set forth in the 
same way. The ' French llevolutioa ' is a blazing heap of simili- 
tudes ; they meet us at every page in twos and threes. They are 
often very homely. The following, taken at random, are tolerably 
fair specimens : — 

"Your Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled, needs only to be poured 
into shapes of Constitiitiun, and 'consolidated' therein." 

"Military France is everywhere full of sour iTiflammatory humour, which 
exhales itself fuliginonsly, this way or that ; a whole continent oC smoking 
flax, whicli, blown on here or there by any angry wind, might so easily start 
into a blaze, iuto a continent of tire." 

"Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously and shows teeth, Patrollotism 
shall supi'i'ess ; or, far belter, Royiilty .shall sootlie down the anger of it by 
gentle pattings, and, nio.st eifectUiil of all, by fuller diet." 

The History of Friedrich is illuminated no le.ss effectively. He 
speaks incidentally of the French Revolution as — 

"That whirlwind of the universe — lights obliterated — and the torn wrecks 
of Earth and Hell liurled aloft into the lMiij)yrean — bla^k whirlwind which 
made even apes serious, and drove most of them mad." 

The above is a characteristic figure. The following, along 
with a characteristic similitude, introduces one of his favourite 
personifications : — 

"As the History of Friedrich, in this Ciistrian epoch, and indeed in all 
epoclis and jiarts, is still little other than a wliirl|iot)l of simnu'iiiig con- 
fusions, dust mainly, and sibylline jiaper-slireds, in tlie jmges of ])oor Dryas- 
dust, perhaps we cannot do better than snatch a shred or two (of the partly 
legible kinii, or capable of being made legible) out of tliat hideous caldron; 
pin them down at their proper dates ; and try if tlie reader can, by such 
means, catch a glimpse of the thing with his own eyes." 

His account of old Friedrich's violence to young Friedrich upon 



154 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the attempted "desertion," is a fair sample of his figurative man- 
ner at its acme : — 

" Fi'iediich Wilhelni's conduct, looked at from withont, appears that of 
a hideous roj'al ocrre, or bliiul aiithroi'ophagons Polyphemus fallen mad. 
Looked at from within, where the Polyiiheiiius lias his reasons, and a kind 
of inner rushlight to enli.uliten his [lath, and is not bent on man-eating, but 
on disci]iline in spite of diffirulties, — it is a wild enough piece of humanity, 
not so much ludicrous as tragical. Never was a royal bear so led about 
before by a pair of conjuring pipers in the market, or brought to such a pass 
in his dancii;g for them." 

Two other things must be noticed before we have a complete 
idea of his employment of similitudes. One is a habit, already 
partially alluded to, of keeping up descriptive metaphors, and 
usinj; them instead of the literal names, or along with the literal 
names as a kind of permanent Homeric epithet. Thus, he never 
mentions the Countess of Darlington without designating her as 
the " cataract of tallow"; or the Duchess of Kendal without some 
thing equivalent to " Maypole or lean human nailrod." The other 
noticeable thing is his frequent repetition, with or without varia- 
tions, of certain favourite figttres. Perhaps the most characteristic 
is his stock of metaphors and similes drawn from the great features 
of the material world to illustrate the moral ; his " pole-star veiled 
by thick clouds," his earthquakes, mad foam-oceans, Noah's deluge, 
muil-deluges, cesspools of the Universe, Pythons, Megatheriums, 
ChinuBras, Dead-Sea Apes, and suchlike. 

He has also certain favourite personifications^ which are made to 
do a great deal of service. Such are the Destinies, the Necessities, 
the dumb Veracities, the Eternal Voices, Fact, Nature, all which 
are so many synonyms for the homely phrase, "circumstances 
beyond our control." We have seen that when Friedrich was 
shut up alone at Ciistrin, he was left in "colloquy with the Des- 
tinies iind the Necessities there." In another passage he is said 
to be " shut out from the babble of fools, and conversing only with 
the dumb Veracities, with the huge inarticulate moanings of Des- 
tiny, Necessity, and Eternity." When he submits to his father, 
he is said to be " loyal to Fact," which means that he yields to 
what he cannot overcome. In like manner. Democracy, " the 
grand, alarming, imminent, indisjmtable Peality," is " the inevi- 
table Product of the Destinies": whoever refuses to recognise that 
the world has come to this, is "disloyal to Fact." "All thinking 
men, and good citizens of their country," " have an ear for the 
small still voices and eternal intimations" ; in other words, discern 
the best course that circumstances will admit of. " The eternal 
regulations of the Universe," " the monition of the gods in regard 
to our affaire," " which, if a man know, it is well with him," are 
other figurative expressions to the same effect. 



FIGURES OF SPEEfH. in 5 

One of Carlyle's favourite inferior personages is Dr)'asdust, 
whom we have ah-eady introduced, lie represents any and every 
historian that takes an interest in what our author finds it conve- 
nient to pronounce "dry. " He is abused sometimes for knowing 
Pivmer's ' Fuodera ' and India Bills, sometimes for knowing Court 
gossip. He is one of Carlyle's standing butts. 

Fiffures of Contigaitj/. — If we apply this designation to every 
case of indicating a thing, not by its literal name, but by use of 
expressive parts and expressive collaterals, Carlyle luxuriates in 
such figures as much as in figures of similarity. 

To take an instance : his metonymies for Death are as numer- 
ous as Homer's. " The all-hiding earth has received him." " Low 
now is Jourdan the Headsman's own head." "So dies a gigantic 
Heathen and Titan ; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down'to his 
rest. . . . His suffering and his working are now ended." "These 
also roll their fated journey." Danton "passes to his unknown 
home." "Our grim good-night to thee is that " (address to the 
German scoundrel upon his execution). 

As with similitudes, so with choice circumstances, he has a way 
of re[)eating them, keei)ing tliem under the reader's notice, as often 
as he mentions the subject Thus, in his pamphlet on " The Nigger 
Question," he is perpetually renewing the image of the "beautiful 
blacks sitting up to their beautiful muzzles in pumpkins." In the 
pamphlet on "The Present Time," he re[>eatedly presents the re- 
forming Pope as "the good Pope with the New Testament in his 
hand." In like manner he takes hold of a title or expression that 
provokes liis mirth, and turns it to ridicule by frequent repetition; 
thus he talks of Parliament as the " Collective wisdom." 

Fif/nres of C out rant are not a marked feature in his style. He 
has a sense of the effect of explicit contrast, and sometimes em- 
ploys it as a means of strength ; but his studied effects are not in 
the direction of sharp antithetical point. 

He makes considerable use of the telling oratorical contrast, the 
juxtaposition of strikingly incongruous circumstances. In his Essay 
on Voltaire he contrasts the blazing glory of Tamerlane with the 
humble industry of Johannes Faust, the inventor of movable types ; 
pointing out that the humble man's influence was in the end much 
the more powerful of the two. So he contrasts the loud trium- 
phant proclamation of the Champs de Mars Federation with the 
signing of the Sci>ttish Snlemn League and Covenant in a dingy 
close of the Edinburgh High Street, and with "the frugal supper 
of thirteen mean-dressed men in a mean Jewish dwelling." The 
'French Revolution' is j)eculiarly rich in such contrasts. He 
makes a fine thing of Robespierre's resigning a judgeship in his 
younger days because he could not bear to sentence a human 
creature to death. The sad end of Marie Antoinette is contrasted 



15G TUUiMAS CARLYLE. 

with her prosperous days ; the tragic heroism of Charlotte Corday 
is made more touching by a fine description of lier personal beauty. 
And in the "sports of ficlvle fortune" with many of the leading 
revolutionists, he finds the utmost scope for Ptembrandt lights and 
shadows. 

Epigram is not much in his way. He occasionally indidges in 
word-play, but it is hardly epigrammatic ; it has more of an aflinity 
with punning. His oft-repeated derivation of king — '•'' K'6n-ning^ 
Can-ning, or Man that is Able " — is a mixture of philology — 
fanciful philology — and pun. Some of his puns are less doubtful. 
Thus, "Certain Heathen Physical- Force Ultra-Chartists, 'Danes' 
as they were then called, coming into his territory with their 'five 
points,' or rather with their five-and-twenty thousand points and 
edges too — of pikes, namely, and battle-axes," &c. So he says 
that the Lancashire and Yorkshire factories are a monument to 
Richard Arkwright, "a true pyramid or_//a?ne-mountain." 

Minor Figures and Firpires Proper. Hyperbole. — Our author's 
hyperboles consist partly in the use of exaggerating similitudes, 
partly in unrestrained torrents of extreme epithets. His exagger- 
ations as to the confusion and dishonesty of these " latter days," 
the general tumble-down and degradation of the whole system of 
modern society, are the most familiar specimens. " Days of end- 
less calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded." 
" Bankruptcy everywhere ; foul ignominy, and the abomination of 
desolation, in all high places." Social afi"airs in a state of the 
frightfulest embroilment, and as it were of inextricable final bank- 
ruptcy, unutterable welter of tumbling ruins." "Never till now, 
I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human non- 
senses." He is conscious of this hyperbolic turn, as, indeed, he 
shows himself conscious of most of his ]ieculiarities. He speaks of 
Teufelsdroeckh's having " unconscionable habits of exaggeration 
in speech." 

When strong epithets, metaphors, similes, and contrasts, put in 
plain forms of speech, come short of the intensity of his feelings, 
he avails himself to an un[irecedented degree of the bolder licences 
of style. Much of his jieculiar manner is made uj) of the special 
figures of Interrogation, Exclamation, and Apostrophe. 

Interrogation is a large element in his mannerism. It is not 
merely an occasional means of special emphasis; it is a habitual 
mode of transition, used by ( 'arlyle almost universally for the vivid 
introduction of new agents and new events. Thus — 

"But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will liave little to devise ; will 
only have to borrow ami ai)]ily. And then, as to the day, what day of all 
the calendar is fit, if the B istille Anniversary be not? " 

After the Queen's execution, he asks, " Whom next, Tinville ?" 



FIGURES OF SPEKCII, 157 

In like manner, recounting some of the proceedings in the Par- 
liamentary war, he says — 

"Rasing is black ashes, then: and Langfdnl is ours, the Garrison 'to 
mnrcii forth to-morrow at twelve of tlie clock, Leing the IStli instant.' And 
now tlie question is, Shall we attack Dcnnington or not?" 

With these vivid epic interrogations, there is usually, as in the 
above examples, a mixture of something like the figure called 
Vision. He supposes himself present at the deliberation of a 
Scheme, the preparation of a great event, and suggests ideas as an 
interested spectator. Thus, after representing how Louis deliber- 
ated wlietlier he should try to conciliate the people, or canvass for 
foreign assistance, he asks — " Nay, are the two hopes inconsistent?" 
Again, he apostrophises the National Assembly expecting a visit 
from the King, with — 

"Think therefore, Messieurs, what it may mean ; especially how ye will 
get the Hall ileioiated a little. . . . Simie fraction of velvet carjiet, can- 
not that be sjiread in front of the chair, where the Secretaries usually sit ?" 

One or two instances give but a faint impression of what is so 
prominent in his style. 

J'Jxclaiu'ttion occnrs in every mood. Sometimes in wonder and 
elation; sometimes in derision and contempt; sometimes in pity, 
sometimes in fun, sometimes in real admiration and aflfection. An 
e.\ample or two may be quoted. Thus — " How thou fermentest 
and elaboratcst, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an 
Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature ! " Many such exclamations of 
wonder occur in his Sartor. His exclamations of derision are ad- 
dressed, not to individuals, but to imaginary personages, as when 
he addresses Dryasdust, — "Surely at least you might have made 
an index for these books;" or to collective masses, as when he ex- 
claims of duellists — " Deuce on it, the little s})itfires ! " Towards 
individuals he seldom if ever expresses eitlier reverential wonder 
on the one hand, or contempt on the other. The scenes of the 
French Revolution often call forth exclamations of pity and horror. 
"Miserable De Launay ! " "Hapless Deshutfes and Varigny ! " 
— such expressions are frequent. At times, also, we come across 
such exclamations as — "Horrible, in lands that had known e(]ual 
justice ! " As an instance of a humorous touch, take his exclama- 
tion on one of the Kaisers — "Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty 
children by one wife ; and felt that there was need of a[>panage3 1 " 
His expressions of admiration for his heroes are numerous. On 
Mirabeau he exclaims — " Pvare union : this man can live self-suffic- 
ing — yet lives also in the lives of other men ; can make men love 
him, work with him ; a born king of men ! " Of Sterling he says — 
" A beautiful childlike soul ! " Oliver and Friedrich he fretpiently 
salutes with expressions of sympathising admiration. Sonietimes, 



158 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

as he has a habit of doing with all his strong effects — in a kind of 
deprecating way — he puts the exclamations into the nior.ths of 
other people — " ' Admirable feat of strategy ! What a general, this 
Prince Carl ! ' exclaimed mankind." " ' Magnanimous ' ' exclaim 
Noailles and the paralysed French gentleman : ' Most magnanimous 
behaviour on his Prussian Majesty's part!' own they." 

Apnstrojohe. — The apostrophising habit is j)erhaps the greatest 
notiibility of his mannerism. His make of mind impels him to 
adopt this art of style, apart from his consciousness of the power 
it gives hiui as a literary artist. It provides one outlet among 
others for his deep-seated dramatic tendency. Farther, it suits 
his active turn of mind and favourite mode of the enjoyment of 
power ; it gives scope for his daring familiarity with personages, 
whether for admiration or for humour, and meets with no check 
from any regard for offended conventionalities. Not so frequently 
does he address in tones of pity ; still, in the moving scenes of the 
French Revolution, and elsewhere, some of his apostrophes are very 
touching. 

His style in its final development affords innumerable examples. 
The 'French Revolution' is particularly full of dramatic apos- 
trophes, as indeed of the irregular figures generally. The author 
sees everything with his own eyes, and addresses the actors in 
warning, exhortation, reproof, or whatever their actions call for. 
Uslier Maillard is shown crossing the Bastille ditch on a plank, 
and warned — "Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man already fell; 
and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry !" When 
De Launay is massacred, the revolutionists are reproved with — 
" Brothers, your wrath is cruel ! " " Up and be doing ! " " Cour- 
age ! " "Quick, then!" Such ejaculations are frequent; to 
every movement, in fact, he contributes the cries of an excited 
bystander. 

As an example of his more declamatory ajiostrophes, take the 
following, which is indeed an imaginary speech : — 

"Away, you! begone swiftly, ye regiments of tlie line! in the name of 
God and of His poor struL'gliiig servant's, sore put to it to live in these bad 
days, I mean to rid myself of you with some degree of brevity. To I'eed yon 
in palacrs, to hire captains, and schoolmasters, and the choicest siiiritual 
and material artificers to exjiend their inilustries on you, —No, by the 
Eternal ! . . . Mark it, my diabolic friends, I mean to lay leather on 
the backs of you," &o,. 

The following is an example of his pathetic apostrophes. In 
the destruction of the Bastille a prisoner's letter was discovered 
with a passionate inquiry after his wife, to which Carlyle re- 
plies : — 

"Poor prisoner, who naniest thjseli QuSret-Dimery, and hast no other 
history,— she is dead, that dear wife of thine, and thou art dead! 'Tis fifty 



SIMrLICITY. 159 

years since thy lircnkint; heart put this question ; to be heard now first, and 
long heard, in the hearts of men." 

His characteristic manner of drawing the attention of the hearer 
■with an imperative, is a mode of apostrojihe — 

"Now, therefore, judge if our patiiot artists are busy ; takint; deep coun- 
sel how to make the scene worthy of a look from the universe." 

It will have been noted that many of the above-qnoted apos- 
trophes are of the nature of the figure called Vision. Carlyle's 
liistories are, indeed, prolonged visions ; throughout he treats the 
payt as present, and makes us, as it were, actual spectators of the 
events related. 

His ironii is a department in itself. It often turns up in such 
passing touches as — "Our Nell Gwyn defender-of-tlie-faith ;" 
" Christ's crown soldered on Charles Stuart's;" " most Christian 
kingship, and most Talleyrand bishopship:" Shakspeare, "whom 
Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the 
treadmill." In his treatment of modern society, irony is often 
kept up through long passages; thus "The Nigger Question" is 
full of irony. It is to be noted th;it his irony can always be known 
as such. He has none of the De Foe irony that runs a danger 
of being mistaken for earnest. The following is a short specimen, 
on the New Poor-Law, from ' Chartism ' : — 

"To read the reports of the Poor- Law Commissioners, if one had faith 
enough, would be a pleasure to the friend of liuuiaiiity. One sole recipe 
secTus to have l^een needful for the woes of l''nglaiid — 'refusal of outdoor 
relief.' England lay in sirk discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed, 
dark, nigli desperate, in wastefulness, -want, inijirovidence, and eating care, 
till, like Hyiierion down ^ the eastern steeps, the Poor-Law Coniinissioners 
arose, and s:iid, Let there be workhouses, and bread of aflliction and water 
of aflliction there ! It was a simple invention ; as all truly great inventiona 
are. And see, in any fjuarter, instantly as the walls of the workhou-e aiise, 
misery and necessity tiy awaj-, out of si^ht, out of being, as is fondly hoped, 
dissolve into the inane ; industiy, frugality, fertility, rise of wages, jieace 
on earth and goodwill towards men do, in the I'oor-l.aw Commissioners' 
reports, — infallibly, rapidly or not so rajiidly, to the joy of all parties, super- 
vene." 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity/. 

(i.) Our author, as we remarked in syieaking of his vocabulary, 
uses a fair admixture of homely words. When hard to under- 
stand, he is so not from the use of technical and scholastic terms, 
but from the use of words of his own coining. A reader of Carlyle, 
not knowing Latin, has often to consult a dictionary, and consults 
it in vain. It is a jest about him that he aspires to the honour 

* " Down " is a small blunder ; it should be np. 



160 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

conferred upon Jean Paul Richter, of having a dictionary written 
for himself. 

As regards his similitudes, we have already seen that many of 
them are homely and grai)hic, while the few stock figures con- 
nected with his fanciful conception of the universe, the action of 
the Destinies, Eternal Voices, and suchlike, rather perplex than 
render comprehension easy. It should, however, be noticed, that 
to those once initiated into the circle of these figures they {iresent 
a really simple, because very undiscriminating, way of expressing 
complicated circumstances. "Loyalty to facts" becomes a very 
glib figure to those that have once mastered its meaning. 

His sentence-structure is favourable to simplicity, being free 
from involution and intricacy. The want of concatenation and 
consecutiveness mars, as has been said, the intelligibility of hia 
rhapsodical ' Pamphlets ' and his ' French Revolution.' These 
drawbacks do not occur so much in the Friedi-ich. 

(2.) His subjects are far from abstruse, being narratives and 
familiar questions of practice. The difficulty of the 'Sartor Resar- 
tus ' is due, not so much to the nature of the subject, as to the in- 
tentional mystification, and the substitution of allusions and figures 
for plain statements. If it were stript of its gorgeous imagery and 
" boiled down," the residuum would probably be more intelligible 
than interesting. 

(3.) Occasionally, for the sake of effects of comprehensive 
strength, he uses al)stract expressions ; but his diction is upon the 
whole concrete to a degree rarely found among writers of prose. 
Even when he uses abstractions, he violates granmiar (p. 149) to 
give them plurals, and thereby treat them as class names ; he vivi- 
fies some of them further (p. 154) by treating them as personalities. 
His love of the concrete often ajipears in his repeating a number of 
suggestive jjarticulars or circumstances instead of one general desig- 
nation. Thus, in his ' Chartism,' when discussing the discontent of 
the working classes, he refers to it again and again by mentioning 
significant symptoms — " Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meet- 
ings, Birmingham riots, Swing conflagrations;" or again, "Chart- 
ism with its pikes, Swing with his tinder-box." When he has to 
state his conviction that much misery is caused by poor Irish labour- 
ers fi.%Jing no Work in Ireland, and coming to England in search of 
it, he does so in very picturesque terms : — 

" But the tliitig we had to state here was our inference from that mourn- 
ful fai't of tlie third Saiispotatoe, rouidinl with this otlier well-known fact, 
that tlie Irish spe^ik a partially intelligible dialect of English, and their fare 
across by steam is fnurpence sterling; ! Crowds of miseialile Iiish darken all 
our towns. The wild .Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, 
unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all iiiuhways and byways. 
The English coachman, as he whii'Is p^ist, lashes the Mihsian with his whip, 
curses him with his tougue : the Milesiau is holdinji out his hat to beg." 



CLEARNESS. ] C, \ 

When he desinis a more comprehensive efTert, he personifies tliis 
influx of Irish destitution under the name of the Irish giant Despair, 
and thus describes him : — 

"I notice him in Piccadilly, blue-vis;ic;e(l, tliatclied in rajis, a blue 
child on each arm ; hunger-driven, wide-mouthed, seeking whom he may 
devour." 

With recrard to this picturesque statement, the remark may be 
made that, wliile each particular is immediately and e<asily uuiler- 
stood, it may be doubted whetlier the meauing that the writer pro- 
fessedly wishes to convey is so easily apprehended as it would be 
in the driest general statement. Upon the wliole, this excess of 
concreteness is perhaps not in favour of our understanding the gen- 
eral drift, but the reverse. ]\Iost readers complain that Carlyle is 
bewildering in his jiroijhetical utterances. 'I'he excess of figures 
and the absence of plain generalities is perhaps partly the cause. 
Let any reader of ordinary analytic power try, after reading ' Cliait- 
ism,' to recall the train of argument, and he will find his confused 
recollection of individually vivid figures rather against than in 
favour of the eflbrt. 

Clearness. 

Perspicuity. — In his expressly didactic or projihetic works, he 
shows, as we have seen, little concern to impart his views without 
confusion. Nor are his essays so perspicuous as the essays of 
Macaulay. The History of Friedrich is, however (see p. 120), a 
clearer narrative than the ' History of England;' it lifts us more 
above the confusion of details by means of comprehensive sum- 
maries and divisions witli descriptive titles, and it brings leading 
events into stronger relief by assigning to subordinate events a 
subordinate place in the narrative. 

Precisian. — He is not iin exact writer. Hating close analysis, 
his aim always is to give the broad general features rather than the 
minute details. He Ikis little of the hair-splittiuir, dividing and 
distinguishing mania of De Quincey ; no desire to sift his opinions 
on a topic, and say distinctly what they are and what they are not. 
Some idea of the difference between them in this res])ect is obtained 
by comparing Carlyle's various lucubrations on Jean I'aul iiicliter 
VN'ith De Quincey's article on the same subject. Rut we see the 
utter antagonism of manner as regards i)recision at its height when 
we reflect how De Quincey would have treated such a sul)ject as 
the discontent of the working classes. If Carlyle iiad been at pains 
to reduce his political views to distinct heads as De Quincey w.aild 
have done, one would have been belter able to judge of their uni- 
versally alleged poverty. 

L 



162 THOMAS CAllLYLK. 



Strength. 

TVe liave already touched on a good many of the peculiarities of 
Carlyle's singular force of style. The language that Sterling calls 
" positively barbarous " — tlie nigged derivatives and quaint sole- 
cisms — is very stimulating when it is intelligible. Among his 
figures of speech we meet with many elements of strength — power- 
ful and original similitudes, bold metaphors, vivid handling of 
alistractions, choice of telling circumstances, sensational contrasts, 
habitual exaggeration of language, an 1 daring liberties vvitli ordi- 
nary forms of speech. Here we have for the production of telling 
literary effects a catalogue of instrumentalities that will hardly be 
parailelt'd from any writer after Sliakspeare. And this is not all. 
The comprehensive summaries, already mentioned as his principal 
instruments of perspicuity, embracing as they do a great range of 
particulars, more than any other of his arts, lift up and dilate the 
mind with a lieeling of extendeil power. 

The crowning feat of strength is the combination of circum- 
stances in effective groups — the imagination of impressive situa- 
tions. Carlyle's power in this respect is nearly, if not quite, equal 
to Shakspeare's — equal, tljat is, in degree, though not perhaps in 
kind. It was first revealed in his 'Sarior Resartus ' ; and none of 
his later works surpass this first great production in the imagina- 
tion of rugged grandeur. Take, for example, his jjicture of "Teu- 
felsdroeckh at the North Pole" : — 

"More lei^'itiiiiate and decisively autlioiitic is Teufelsdrnerkh's nppearanee 
and einerireiiee (we know not \vell wlience) in the solitude of the North Ca|ie, 
on tliat June j\lidai,uht. He has a 'bj,'ht-blue Spanish clnak ' hanging 
round him, as his ' most conniiodious, piineip d, nideed sole uppt-r-^ar- 
ment ; ' and staiuls there on the World-proujuntory, lookinf; over the infinite 
Brint', like a little bhie Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet 
ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 

"'Silence as of death,' writes he; "for Midnight, even in the Arctic 
latitudes, has its character: nothing hut the graiute clills ruddy-tniged, the 
peaceable gurgle of lliit slow-heaving Polar (Icean, over which in the utmost 
Korth the great Sun hani,'s low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet 
is ids cloud-conch wrought of crimson and cloth-ol'-gold ; yet docs his light 
stream ovei' the mirror of waters, like a tremulous tire-pillar, shooting down- 
wards to the abyss, and hide itsidf under my feet. In such moments, Soli- 
tude also is invaluable ; for who would speak, or be looked on, when be- 
hind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen ; and 
before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our 
Sun is but a porch- lamp ? ' " 

Another fair specimen of his combining power is seen in Teu- 
felsdroeckh's "own ideas with respect to duels." This also shows 
a spice of cynicism : — 

"FewthiiigS; in this so surprising world, strike me with more surpiise. 



STRENGTH. 1G3 

Two little visual Spectra of men, hover'nij; with insecure cohesion in the 
midst of the Unfa rnoMAP.LK, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very 
soon, — make pause at the distance of twelve pnces asunder; whiil round; 
and, simultaneously by the cunninsjest mechanism, explode one another into 
Dissolutiim ; and ofif-hand become Air, and Non- extant! Deuce on it 
[vcrdammt], the little spitfires ! — Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trim- 
berg: 'God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see His 
wondrous Manikins here below ! ' " 

In one of his later Miscellanies, iv. 315, there is a "Fragment 
on Duelling" (of date 1850), where tlie actual tights are described 
with startling spirit, and the surroundings drawn with almost iu- 
coniparable power, Titis also is a good specimen of his style. 

Let us take a brief glance at the principal themes or occasions 
that excite his powers of gorgeous expression, (i.) He puts forth 
all his powers to extol his favourite recipes for clearing the world 
of confusion. One or two fragments of such eloquence have been 
already given. Above all, he is ever on the watch for an oppor- 
tunity of enforcing his gospel of Work, the panacea which alone 
brings order out of confusion, cosmos out of chaos. Such passages 
as the following may be described as "bracing." The general 
effect of such a gospel is to exalt the sense of active vigour, to 
disturb, if not dispel, the indolent mood compatible with adoring 
reverence or tender sentiment : — 

"Any law, however well meant as a law, which has become a bounty on 
unthrift, idleness, bastardy, and beer-drinking, nuist be ]nit an end to. In 
all WMys it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for 
the idle man tliere is no place in this England of ours. He that will not 
work, and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither ; let him 
know that for him the Law has made no soft provision, but a hard and 
stern one ; that, by the Law of Nature, which the law of England would 
vainly contend against in the long-run, he is doomed either to quit these 
habits, or miserably be extruded from this earth, wiiich is made on principles 
dill'erent from tliese. ... A day is ever struguding f(>rw;ird, a day will 
arrive in some approximate degree, when he wlio has no wmk to do, by 
whatever name he may be named, will not liud it good to show himself in 
our quarter of the solar system. " 

His eulogy of the heroes, the men that he pronounces to have 
done genuine work in the world, has the same bracing tone. Pros- 
trate adoration, as we have seen, does not suit his temperament; 
he "fraternises" with the heroes, holds up them and their works 
as patterns to all men of the heroic mould. True, he commands 
the multitude to worship, and dechdms against them if they refuse; 
but he is rarely found in the adoring attitude himself. 

(2.) Perhaps his richest vein is his unmeasured invective against 
everything that defeats the hero's efforts to redress the universal 
confusion, and his overcliarged pictures of that confusion. He does 



164 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

not assail individuals for single acts — that would have a narrow 
and rancorous effect. When au offender crosses his path, he 
denounces him not personally, but as one of "the Devil's Regi- 
ment," as adding his little contribution to the " bellowing chaos," 
" the wide weltering confusion." Most of his stnmiy warfare of 
wor Is is directed against the evils of this life gathered up under 
abstractions familiar to the most incidental reader of his books — 
Shams, Unveracities, Speciosities, Phantasms, and suchlike. We 
must be content for examples with fragments already quoted. 
(See pp. 142, 154). 

(3.) He describes with surjiassing power tlie grand operations of 
Nature in her terrible aspects. He is not insensible to beneficent 
grandeurs, but his temperament inclines him more to the gloomy 
side — to the "tropical tornado" more than to the "rainiiow and 
orient colours." At times he represents that a God, an Order, a 
Justice, presides over the " wild incoherent waste "; that to a man 
understanding the Sphinx riddle (another variety for the "eternal 
regulations of the Universe"), Nature is "of womanly celestial 
loveliness and tenderness;" that "Nature, Universe, Destiny, 
Existence, however we name this grand unnameable fact in the 
midst of which we live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and con- 
quest to the wise and brave." But on this aspect of Nat\u-e he 
dwells less than on the opposite. More often " the wild Universe 
storms in on Man infinite, vague-menacing." It is on this aspect 
of the Universe that he has accumulated his " Titanic " grandeurs 
of expression. 

As an example of his luxurious revelling in " sulphur, smoke, and 
flame," may be quoted the following from his ' Chartism ' : — 

" It is in Glast^ow among that class of operatives that ' Number 60,' in 
his dark rDoiii, i>!iy.s down the price of blood. Be it with reason or witli un- 
reason, too surely tliey do in veiiry find the time all out of joint ; this 
world for them no liome, but a din<:;y prison-house, of reckless unthril't, 
rebellion, rancour, iuili'^uation against tiiemselves and ag;iiast all men. Is 
it a green flowery world, witli ;izure everlasting sky stretclied over it, the 
work and government of a God ; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of cop- 
peras-fumes, cotton-fuz, gin-riot, wrath and toil, created by a Di-mon, 
governed by a Demon ? The sum of their wretcliedness, merited and un- 
merited, welters, huge, dark, and baleful, like a Dantean Htdl, visible there 
in the statistics of Gill ; Gin, justly named the most authentic incarnation 
of the Infernal Principle in our times, too indisputably an incarnation ; 
Gin, the black throat into which wretchedness of every sort, consummating 
itself by calling on Delirium to hi-lp it, whirls down ; abdication of the 
power to think or resolve, as too painful now, on the part of men whose lot 
of all others would require thought and resolution : liquid Madness sold at 
teupence the quartern, all the products of which are and must be, like its 
origin, mad, miserable, ruinous, and that only ! If from this black, un- 
Inminous, unheeded inferno, and prison-house of souls in pain, there do 
flash up fioni time to time some dismal widespread glare of Chartism or tha 
like, notable to all, claiming remedy from all," &.c. 



PATHOS — THE LUDICROUS. 165 

Pathos. 

Carlyle's writings are not without gleams of patlios, all the more 
toucliing from the surrounding ruggedncss. A man of strong 
special affoction.s, he dwells with mo^t moving tenderness on the 
life and character of liis friends Edward Irving and John Sterling. 
To his heroes — Mirabeau, Cromwell, Friedricli, Burns — he seems 
to have been bound by something of the same personal attach- 
ment ; and he records their death as with the deep sorrow of a 
surviving friend. 

He often waxes wroth with " puking and sprawling Senti- 
mentalism;" and the thought of human misery seems usually to 
rouse his indignation against idleness as the cause of misery, and 
to excite him to a more vehement enforcement of his panacea, the 
gospel of Work. Yet sometimes the thought of human misery 
does unnerve him, and throw him into the melting mood. Thus, 
when he stands with Teufelsdroeckh in the porch of the " Sanc- 
tuary of Sorrow," he cries : — 

" Poor, WHiulcriiig, wayward man ! Art tliou not tried, and lienten with 
stripes, even as 1 am ? Ever, whetiier thou hear tlie royal nianlle or the 
beLTicar's galiardine, art thou not so weary, so licavy-laden ? and thy Bed 
of Rest is hut a (irave. O my Brother, my Brother! why cannot I shelter 
thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes ? " 

His most characteristic pathos is his subdued sorrow at the 
irresistible progress of time. The tired labourer mourns wearily 
that he can do so little, that time is so short. This weary feeling 
often crosses his page. " Agamemnon, the many Agamennions, 
Pcricleses, and their Greece ; all is gone now to some ruined 
fraLrments — dumb, mournful wrecks and blocks." Jocelin of 
Brakelond is " one other of those vanished existences whose 
work is not yet vanished ; almost a pathetic phenomenon, were 
not the whole world full of such ! " So (to give one more 
example) he moralises as follows on the glimpse of Cromwell's 
cousin in one of the Letters : — 

"Mrs St John came down to breakfast every morning in that summer 
visit of tlie year 163S, and Sir William said giave graee, and they spake 
polite (ievout things to one another; and they are vanislied, they and 
tlieir things and speeches, — all sihnt, like tlie echoes of the old nightin- 
gales that sang that season, like the blossoms of the old roses. Death ! 
Time 1 " 

Tlie Ludicrous. 

ITis sense of the ludicrous runs riot ; it may be said to be 
present everywliere in his writings. When not absolutely i^re- 
dominant, it makes itself felt as a condiment, adding a grotesque 
flavour even to his serious declamations. A few modes of the 
quality may be specified : — 



166 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

(i.) His cynicism. — While he often dilates on the grandeurs of 
human destiny, he not unfrequently sneers at mankind with dry 
contempt. It is not the fierce cynicism of Timon ; he is too 
maoinanimous for that. He surveys mankind from an Olympian 
height, and is tickled by their doings. See the " little spitfires " 
and "manikins" in the passage on duels, p. 163. Compare also 
this godlike cynicism with the despondency of Hamlet. To Ham- 
let the world is "a sterile promontory," "a pestilent congregation 
of vapours"; to Teufelsdroeckh in certain moments the world 
seems "a paltry dog's cage." 

(2.) His derision is, however, usually more boisterous, less 
notably dry. He is not personal and rancorous ; he does not rail 
against individuals. His favourite butts are certain abstractions, 
institutions, and opinions; a whole pandemonium of Shams, — 
sham Authorities, sham secretaries of the Pedant species, Ac. — 
"vile age of Pinchbeck," "wild Anarchy and Pha Uus- Worship ;" 
the Church, Parliament, Downing Street, galvanised Catholicism, 
Kings, Aristocracy ; Reform movements, Exeter Hall Philan- 
thropic movements, Puseyism, Logic, Political Economy, Benth- 
amee Radicalism, Leading Articles. In truth, he seems to dislike 
all existing institutions and all existing opinions, with the excep- 
tion of one set. He has thus absolutely unlimited scope for his 
riotous derisive humour ; his field is the world. And it cannot 
be denied that he turns his position to the best account. 

One of his most characteristic proceedings is to heap contemp- 
tuous nicknames upon the object of his dislike. His command 
of language here stands liim in good stead. See his " Nigger 
Question," "The Dismal Science," "Pig-Philosophy," "Horse- 
hair and Bombazeen Procedure." Any page of his declamations 
on modern society will give abundance of exanifiles. Another 
favourite device is to set up representative men with ridiculous 
names, as IM'Croudy, the Right Honourable Zero, the Hon. 
Hickory Buckskin, the Duke of Trumps, and many others, not 
to mention the unquenchable Dryasdust. 

It is to be observed that whether his ridicule be quiet or 
boisterous, the absence of personal spleen makes it essentially 
humorous, not vindictive, bitter, rancorous. The man places 
himself at such a height above other mortals, and is so sublimely 
confident in his views, that difference of opinion rather amuses 
than provokes him, and leaves him free to turn his opponent into 
ridicule "without any ill feeling." 

(3.) In his apostrophes we have seen what humorous liberties 
he takes with individuals. In all these ludicrous degradations 
there is a redeeming touch of kindness. The kindness is always 
there, whatever be the form of it — whether grim, grotesque, 
whimsical, or playfully afi'ectionate. Even towards scoundrels 



MELODV — HAKMONY — TASTE. 1 G7 

of easy morality, like Wilhelmus Sacrista in ' Past and Present,' 
he sliows some relenting when tliey come before him in their 
personality as individuals. Poor William, given to "libations 
and tacenda," is deposed by Abbot Samson, and, in spite of all 
his idleness, gets from our author the following kindly parting : — 

" Wliether the poor Willielmus did not still, by secret channels, occa- 
sionally get some slight witting of vinous or alcoholic. liquor, — now grown, 
in a niiinner, indispensable to the poor man ? — Jocelin hints not ; one 
knows not liow to hope, wliat to hope ! But if he did, it was in silence 
and darkness ; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was las only 
true course." 

His nicknames for individuals are moderated to the same kindly 
tone of humour. Karl August is very objectionable in the ab- 
stract ; yet Carlyle gives him no harder nickname than " August 
the Physically Strong"; and in his older days, "August the 
Dilapidated-Strong." 

(4.) In his ' Sartor Resartus,' and elsewhere, he shows himself 
capable of the humour of driving fun at himself. The chapter 
on I'klitorial Difficulties is a sample. The humour is much nmre 
self-asserting than De Quincey's ; it amounts in substance to this, 
that he fathers his most extravagant eccentricities upon a feigned 
name, and criticises them from an ordinary point of view — a 
device for stating, without the appearance of extravagance, opin- 
ions that the general public might think bombastic were they 
delivered in the author's own person. 

(5.) In a writer of such brilliant execution as Carlyle, the 
quality of the humour is much enhanced ))y the pleasure arising 
from the freshness of the language. When the ludicrous over- 
throw of dignitaries would otherwise be apt to raise serious feel- 
ings, the enjoyment of the language is conciliating, and disposes 
the reader to laugh rather than be angry. 

Melody — Harmony — Taste. 

As respects the melodious combination of words, Carlyle, though 
not below average, is by no means a model. He despises all study 
to avoid harsh successions ; he considers such art to be mere 
trifling in the present age. In his own attempts to "sing" — 
that is, to write verses before he fully discovered that his strength 
lay in prose — the rhythm is conspicuously bad. 

Still his prose has a jieculiiir strain — a characteristic movement. 
From such passages as have been given, the reader with an ear for 
cadence will have no difficulty in making it out. It corresjionded 
to the emphatic .'^in^song intonation of his voice ; a stately sort of 
rhythm, after a fashion of stateliness that difl'eis from De Quincey's 
ill the rugged uumelodious How, and the frequent recurrence of 
emphasis. 



168 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

As regards Harmony between the rhythm and the sense, with 
Carlyle, as with other impassioned writers, the agreement is most 
perfect when he is writing at full swing in his favourite mood. 

He has an ostensible and paraded contempt for the idea of art, 
or of composition intended to please. Himself nothing if not 
artisticid, he insists on being supposed to wear no garb but the 
mantle of the prophet. Though thus formally disavowing art, he 
really does, consciously or unconsciously, sacrifice even truth to be 
artistical. Not to review him as an artist, is to do him an injns- 
tice. As an artist, he errs chiefly in carrying his favourite effects 
to excess. 

In the pursuit of strength, he sometimes intrudes expressions 
that approach the confines of rant. Thus, in the following extract 
he ruins a passage of real pathos with one of his extravagantly 
sensational mannerisms : — 

"For twenty generations here was the earthly arena where powerful 
living men worked out tlieir lile-wrestle, — looked at by EartJi, Hiaven, 
and Hell. Bells tolled to prayers ; and men, of many humours, various 
tliouglits, chanted vespei's, matins ; — and rouiul the little islet of tlieir life 
rolled for ever (as round ours still rolls, though we are liliiid and deaf) the 
illiniituble Ocean, tinting all things with its eternal hues and reflexes; mak- 
ing strans^e pru})hetic music ! How silent now ! all departed, clean gone. 
The World-Dr.inuitnrgist has wiitten, Exeunt. The devouring Time-Demous 
have made away with it all : and in its stead, there is either nothing ; or 
what is worse, ofi'tnsive universal dust-clouds, and grey eclipse of Earth and 
Heaven, from 'dry rubbish shot here.'" 

From this passage, which ojiens with such beauty, common taste 
would probably banish the World- Dramaturgist and the Time- 
Demons ; and the concluding expression would generally be re- 
garded as unseasonable buffoonery. One class of his oflfences, 
then, may be set down to the temporary dulling of the artistic 
sense by ovei'-excitement. 

Fartlier, his humour betrays him into violations of taste. This 
is done deliberately, in cold blood, not from over-excitement. A 
humorous turn is given to a declamation on a grave subject — 
such a subject as overwhelms the ordinary mind with seriousness. 
The conclusion of the passage on duelling is an example. If an 
explanation of tliis is sought, probably none will be found except 
the pleasure, natural to strong nerves, of treating with levity what 
weaker brethren cannot help treating with gravity. Partly to the 
same motive may be referred his humorous treatment of the more 
serious outbreaks of the elder Friedrich. On this have been ])assed 
some of the severest connnents that our author has received in the 
course of his career as a writer. His humour causes him to offend 
on another side. Some of his fun is quite as broad as the taste 
of the period will allow. In such figures as "owl-droppings," and 
" the ostrich turning its broad end to heaven," he goes beyond the 



DESCRIPTION. 1G9 

standing limits of this century. Tn 'Sartor Resartus,' the name 
"Teiifelsdroeckh " and the "Nobleman's Epitaph" would hardly 
be tolerated if rendered in tlie vernacular. 

Under errors in Taste might also be reckoned his barbarisms 
and solecisms of language. Farther, almost universally he is 
charged with abusing his vast figurative resources, with carrying 
his figurative manner to excess. He would seem to have been 
conscious of his liability to this charge before it was made: in a 
passage already qunted from the Sartor, he speaks of labouring 
under figurative plethora. At the same time, it is undoubtedly to 
the freshness and ojtulence of his imagery that he owes a great 
part of his reputation. 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Description. 

Tn Carlyle's powers of description lies one of his most indisput- 
able claims to high literary rank. He seems to have studied the 
art most elaborately. We can gather from his various books that 
all his life long he had watched human beings and natural scenery 
with an eye to the rendering of their peculiarities into language. 
Especially in his later writings he describes with incom[)arable 
felicity. 

In the delineation of external nature, "his peculiarities are to 
bring forward in strong relief the comprehensive aspects, to im- 
press these by iteration and by jjicturesque comparisons, to use 
the language of the associated feelings, and in the sha[)e of har- 
nionions groupings to intro luce some of the elements of poetry." 
The following, from the lust volume of ' Friedrich,' exeuijilities 
liis statement, repetition, and illustration of the general features 
of a scene : — 

"Torgan itself stands near Ell^e ; on the shonMor, eastern or Elbeward 
shoulder, of ;i big mass of Kiioll, or broad Ib'ii,'lit, called ot iSiptitz, the main 
eminence of tlie Gau. Shoulder, I called ii.i dl' this lleirjht, ot Siptitz; but 
more properly it ^ is on a continuation, or lower ulterior height dipping 
into Elbe itself, that Torgau stands. Sijititz Heiglit, near!)' a mile tioin 
Elbe, (lips down iiun a stra<.'gle of {loiuls ; sifter wbi.-h, on a .second or final 
rise, comes Toif;an dippin<^ into Elbe. Not a shoulder strictl)', but rather 
a check, with ucck intervenint; ; — neck goilri/ for that nintter, or <iuni.'gy with 
ponds ! The old Town stands hiL,'ii enougli, but is enlaced on tiie western 
and siiuthern side by a set of lakes and (pia;^niires, some of whiili are still 
extensive and undrained. The course of the waters liereabouts, and of Elbe 
itself, has liad its intricacies ; close to north-west, Torgau is bordered, in a 
stragi:ling way, by wliat they call Old Kll/e ; wliich is not now a llnent entity, 
but a stagnant congeries of dirty waters and morasses. The Hill of Siptitz 



1 Tlie two t7s with different references are awkward. In place of " I called it," 
he should have used some such expression as '' 1 said," without the il. 



170 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

abuts in tliat aqueous or quaggy manner; its fore-feet being, as it were, at 
or in Elbe River, ami its sides, to tlie south and to tlie north for some dis- 
tance each way, considerably enveloped in ponds and boggy difficulties." 

The following, from his article on Dr Francia, illustrates his 
dexterity iii making a description vivid by imagining the feelings 
of a spectator : — 

"Few things in late war, according to General Miller, have been more 
noteworthy than this march. The long straL^glinu' line of soldiers, six 
thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through 
the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal soli- 
tudes ! For you fare along, on some narrow roadway, through stony laby- 
rinths ; huge rock-mountains hanging over your head on this hand, and 
under your feet on that ; the roar ot mountain-cataracts, hurror of bottomless 
chasms ; — the very winds and echoes howling on you in an almost preter- 
natural manner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high before you, and behind 
3'ou, and around you ; intricate theoutgate ! The roadway is narrow ; foot- 
ing none of the best. Sharp turns there are, where it will behove you to 
mind your paces ; one false step, and you will need no second ; in the gloomy 
jaws ot the abyss you vanish, and the s|)ectral winds howl requiem. Some- 
what better are the suspension-bridges, made of baiuboo and leather, though 
tliey swing like see-saws : men are statiom-d with lassos, to gin you dexter- 
ously, and tish you up from the torrent, if you trip there." 

This passage is also a good example of a description where the 
particulars support each other : along with towering rocks and a 
narrow roadway we natura ly expect huge abysses and roaring 
waters. The mention of the hollow winds shows his sensibility 
to harmonious poetical effects. 

"A description is more easily and fully realised when made 
individual — that is, presented under all the conditions of a par- 
ticular moment of time." Our author fully understands this : it 
is one of his cardinal arts. His works abound in picturesque 
allusions to seasons and times, to temporary attitudes of things 
and persons. Thus, in his ' Life of Sterling ' : — 

" One day in the spring of 1S36, I can still recollect. Sterling had proposed 
to me, by way of wide ramble, useful for various ends, that I should walk 
with him to Eli ham and back, to see this Edgewortli, whom I also knew a 
little. We went accordingly together ; tvalkiiig rn]iidlt/, sm wan St(Mling'3 
wont, and, no doubt, talkimj extensively. It probably was in the end of 
Febrnaiy ; / avii rcincmber lenjU'ss hedijes, cirey driving clouds, procession 0/ 
hoarding -school girls in smne quiet part 0/ the route. " 

Again — 

"At length some select friends were occasionally admitted ; signs of im- 
provement began to appear ; and, in the bright iu-i/ight, Kensington Gardens 
were gn-en, and sky and earth were hopeful, as one went to make in(|iiiry. 
The summer brilliancy was abroad over the world before we fairly saw Ster- 
ling again sub dco. " 

111 his account of Walter Raleigh's execution one sentence is 



DESCEirTION. 171 

" A cold hoar-frosty morning.'^ Such touches as the following are 
pretty frequent : — 

"The Scots delivered their fire with such constancy and swiftness, it was 
as if the wliole air had become an element of tire — in the ancient summer 
gloaming there." 

In describing the tumults after the cai)ture of the Eastile, he sud- 
denly breaks in — 

" evening sun of July, how, at thii hour, thy hcains fall slant on renyicrs 
amid peacefiil woody fii-Ms ; on old women spinning in cottages; on shijis 
far out in tlie silent niiiiii ; on Balls at the Oran^erie of Versailles, where 
high-rouged Dames of tlie Palace are even now dancing with doalile-jacketfd 
Hussar-officers, — and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville !" 

One of his most effective groupings is the bivouac of the army 
that we have just seen described in tlieir passage over the Andes — 

"What an entity, one of those night-leaguers of San Martin ; all steadily 
snoring thi r^ in the lii art of the Andes tmdcr the eternal stars I Wayworn 
sentries \\ith difficulty keep themselves awake; tired mules chew bailey 
rations, or doze on three hgs ; the feeble watch-fire will hardly kindle a 
cigar ; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter dmrn ; and all snore steadily, 
begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the Constellations in that manner." 

His narratives are eminently pictorial. At every steji in the 
succession of events we are stopped to look at some posture of the 
actors or their surroundings. This is one of the most striking 
features in the 'French lievohition ' ; it may be called a historic 
word tapestry, a series of significant word-pictures ; it rather de- 
scribes events in order than relates the order of events. A short 
example can give but a faint idea of the character of such a work ; 
the following specimen is taken at random. It describes the storm- 
ing of the palace of Versailles by a mob : — 

"Woe now to all bod}' -guards, mere}' is none for them ! Miomandre de 
Sainte-Maiie pleads with soft words, on the grand staircase, ' descending 
four steps' to the roaring tornado. His conu'ades snatcli him uj), by tlie 
skirts and belts ; literally from the jaws of Destruction ; and slam-to their 
door. This also will stand few instants ; the ])anels shivering in, like pot- 
sherds. Barricading serves not : fly fast, ye body-guards ! rabid Insurrection, 
like the Hellhound Clnise, uproaring at your heels ! 

"T!ie terror-struck body-guards Hy, bolting and barricading ; it follows. 
Whitherward ? Thiough hall on hall : woe, now ! towards tlie Queen's suite 
of rooms, in the furthest room of which the Queen is now asleep. Five sen- 
tinels rush through that long suite ; they are in the ante-room knocking 
loud: 'Save the Queen!' Trembling women fall at their feet with tears: 
are answered: ' Yes, we will die ; save ye tlie Queen !' 

" Tremble not, women, but haste : for, lo, another voice shouts far through 
the outermost door, 'Save the Queen!' and tlie door is shut. It is brave 
Mioniatidre's voice that shouts this second warning. He has storuu-d across 
imminent death to do it ; fronts imminent <ieath, having done it. Brave 
Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same des])erate service, was borne down 
with pikes ; his comrades hardly snati lied him in again alive. Miomandre 



172 THOMAS CAULYLE. 

and Tardivet: ]et the names of these two Body-guards, as the names of brave 
men sliould, live long. 

" Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar canght glimpse of 
Miomandre, as widl as heard him, hastily wrap np the Queen ; not in robes 
of state. She flies for her lilV, across the CEil-de-liceuf ; against the maia- 
door of which, too, Insurrection baiters. She is in the King's ap^irtmeiit, 
in the Kini^'s arms ; she clasps her children amid a faitld'ul few. The 
imperial-hearted bursts into mother's tears : ' my friends, save me and my 
children ! mes amis, sauvcz moi et mes enfans ! ' The battf-ring of Insur- 
rectionary axes clangs audible across the (Eil-de-Boeuf. What an hour ! " 

We might institute a, comparison between Macaulay and Cailyle 
as regard.s the description of human being-s. Take equal portions 
of their historical works and you find a greater abundance of con- 
crete circumstances in Carlyle than in Macaulay. As a pictorial 
artist Carlyle is of the two the most studied and elaborate. Hardly 
an iudivi lual cmsses Carlyle's page that is not made to appear in 
some characteristic attitude, or under some significant image: a 
much greater proportion of Macaulay's personages are mere names 
and functionaries. But let us take any individual that plays a 
prnminent part in the narrative, and we sliall probably find that 
Macaulay, in his diffuse way, records the greater number of facts 
concerning him. We have seen that it is so in the case of John- 
son (p, 1 1 8). Macaulay's narrative contains fewer concrete cir- 
cumstances upon the whole, but more concerning any prominent 
individual. 

This difference between our two authors connects itself with a 
deeper difference. Carlyle is more subjective than Macaulay: he 
systematically attempts to picture the inner man. Partly as a 
consequence of this, he gives fewer circumstances : the diffuse 
Macaulay, taking no trouble to group circumstances about a few 
leading qualities of mind, gives freely out of the abundance of liis 
memory ; but Carlyle gives only circumstances that he sees to be 
characteristic, that he is able to read into consistency with his 
ideas of the man's nature. Macaulay gives numerous outward 
particulars, sayings, and doings gathered with confident hand fmrn 
all manner of anecdotes and reminiscences, and leaves readers 
very much to their own inferences as to the thoughts and feelings 
that passed underneath these appearances. He is pre-eminently 
objective, and his record of circumstances is given in an easy ex- 
cursive way. Carlyle, on the other hand, laboriously masters the 
cliaracters of the leading personages in the events that he relates, 
and struggles to conceive and to represent how they felt and how 
they expressed their feelings in the various situations touched 
npon in his narrative : he is too intensely concentrated upon the 
immediately relevant situations to go gossiping away into previous 
incidents in the lives of the personages concerned. 

Take as a faint illustration, one particular case. Macaulay's 



XARRATIVE. 173 

account of the Engllgk Revolution is much less pictorial upon the 
■whole than Carlyle's ' French Revolution.' I'.ut Mncaiilay gives 
us a great many more particulars concerning the principal states- 
men at the Court of Cliarle-s 11. than Carlyle gives us concerning 
the principal statesmen at the Court of Louis XV. Carlyle takes 
up a particular moment, the illness of Louis XV., and dramatically 
represents how this fact was regarded by various personages and 
classes throughout Paris according to tln'ir several characters : the 
abundant pictorial matter is given chiefly iu illustration of char- 
acteristic thoughts and feelings. 

Narrative. 

As already incidentally remarked (p. i6i), Carlyle's narrative 
method is seen to most advantage in his ' Friedrich.' In the 
'French Revolution' there are many dcfecis afterwards overcome, 
riie introduction of new personages is there less carefully attended 
to. There also he errs greatly in the excess of his moralisings and 
preachings, which perpetually interrupt the narrative. 

In the ' Frieilrich,' through his intense desire to be lucid, to put 
nimself in the reader's place, and appreciate difficulties, the minor 
arts of narrative are carefully observed. His ordinary narrative 
paragraph, although never absolutely perfect, is seldom perplexed 
by the confusion of the persons acting. He always notices the 
ttp[)earance or disappearance of important agents, and, knowing 
the difficulties of description, does not unguardedly shift the 
scenes. His long introduction to the history of Friedrich's reign, 
extending through two volumes, is exemplary in these respects : 
whatever may be said of the wild phantasmagoric or pantomimic 
character of the narrative, it certainly has the merit of making us 
distinctly aware wMien new figures appear, and when they depart, 
and of not only bringing but keeping under our attention the 
place and the circumstances. He also understands well the neces- 
sity of supporting the main story in its place of prominence, of 
indicating collateral and dependent events in their proper char- 
acter, and of making all his transitions broad and apparent. His 
imaginary authorities, Dryasdust and Sauerteig, and " the well- 
known hand" that contributes subordinate narratives, have this 
to be said as a justification of their existence, that tliey do help to 
keep separate what thg author considers of inferior from what he 
considers of superior importance. Dryasdust gives numerous par- 
ticulars of small C(m8equence about the private life of the prince, 
and does such dry business as " A peep into the Nosti-Grumkow 
Correspondence caught up in St Mary Axe : " Sauerteig gives wild 
views about the proper perscms to write history, and does the un- 
palatable work of defending old Friedrich's charactei* iu the loftiest 



174 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Carlylian manner ; tlie "well-known hand " gives us in smill print 
Prince Karl's operations on the Rhine, the account of Skipper 
Jenkins, the life of Voltaire, and suchlike particulars subsidiary to 
the main narrative. 

One great help to the lucidity of his narrative is the titular 
summaries, or labels, as he calls them. They lighten the heavy 
body of the narrative, giving the reader a natural break or stop, 
an op[iortunity for hooking back and forward. Every book has 
its descriptive heading — " Double-Marriage Project, and Crown 
Prince, going adiift under the Storm-winds, 1727-1730:" "Fear- 
ful Shipwreck of the Double- ISIarriage Project, February — Novem- 
ber 1730:" " Crown-Pj'ince Ketrieved ; Life at Ciistrin, Novem- 
ber 1730 — February 1732." By these more comprehensive head- 
ings, we are enabled to run over the general succession of events 
without confusion. Then, the books are subdivided into chapters, 
each with a descriptive "label"; and within the cha[)ters there 
are divisions of still smaller compass. Thus, the leading subject 
of one chapter is " Death of George I.:" as a minor subject we 
have — "His Prussian Majesty falls into one of his Kypocliondria- 
cal Fits." The leading title of another chapter is " Visit to 
Dresden ;" the minor " labels " are — " The Physically strong pays 
his Counter Visit ;" and — " Of Princess Wilhelmina's Four Kings 
and other Ineffectual Suitors." With this care in dividing and 
subdividing, the table of Contents becomes a vertebrate skeleton 
of the work, instead of being merely an analysis witiiout any dis- 
crimination of degrees of imj^ortance. 

Upon the whole it may safely be afhrmed that by one means 
or another, ordinary and extraordinary, he makes his narratives 
the most lucid productions of their kind. It may be a question 
whether he has not made sacrifices to distinctness, and whether 
lie might not have been equally lucid without being offensively 
eccentric. 

In the Explanation of Events, he proceeds with his natural per- 
spicacity, though he grumbles a good deal at being obliged to 
explain. Thus, he enters at considerable length into the sources 
and the progress of the quarrel between old Friedrich and George 
II., enumerating sejtarately five causes. His mtinner of explana- 
tion is thoroughly his own. Dry analysis being distasteful to him, 
he proceeds dramatically, disclosing the moving springs of events 
in supposed soliloquies, and perstmal communications oral and 
verbal between the leading agents, himself being usually present, 
and putting in his word after the fashion of a Greek chorus. 
How different his manner is from the ordinary way of writing his- 
tory, need hardly be pointed out. 

Two short passages from his account of the above-mentioned 



NARRATIVE, 175 

quarrel " between the Britannic and Prussian Majesties" are all we 
have room for : — 

*' 'Sly Brotlier the Comddiant' (George II.) 'quietly put liis Fatlier's 
Will ill iiis pocket, I liave licard ; ami paid no regard t" it (except what he 
was compelled to [lay, by Chesterfield and otiiers). Will lie do the like 
with his p'or Mother's Will ?' Patiencf, your Majesty : he is not a covet- 
ous man, but a self-willed and a ]>roud, — always conscious to himself' that he 
is the soul of honour, this poor brother King." 

" Very soon after George's accession there began clouds to rise ; the per- 
fectly accomplished little George assuming a severe and high air towards his 
rustic Brother-in-law. 'We cannot stand theses Prussian enlistments and 
encroarlinients ; rectify these in a high and sivcre manner ! ' says George to 
his Hanover othuials. George is not warm on his throne lill there comos in, 
aixordingly, from tlie Hanover offiii ils, a complaint to that eliect, and even 
a List of Hanoverian subjects, who are, owing to various injustices, nnw 
serving in the Prussian ranks. ' Your Prussian Majesty is ret^uested to re- 
turn us these men ! ' 

" This List is dated 22d January 1728 ; George only a few months old in 
his new aulhority as yet. The Prussian Majesty grumbles painfully resjjon- 
eive : 'Will, with eagerness, do whatever is just ; most surely ! But is his 
Britannic Majesty aware ? Hanover officials are ([uite misinformed as to the 
circumstances ;' and does not return any of the men. JMcrely a pacific 
grumble, and nothing clone in legard to the complaints. Then there is the 
meadow of Clanrei which we spoke of : ' That belongs to Ijiandenburg you 
say? Nevertheless, the contiguous parts of Hanover liave rights upon it.' 
Some ' eight cartloads of hay,' worth, say, almost 5/. or lol. sterling : who 
is to mow that grass I womler? 

" Friedrich Wilhelm feels that all this is a pettifogging, vexatious course 
of procedure ; and that his little cousin, the Comoiliaiit, is not treating him 
very like a gentleman. ' Is he, your Majesty!' suggests the Smoking I'ar- 
liament. " 

His deep-seated dramatic tendency leads him to such forms, 
when lie does condescend to "motive-grinding." Explanation on 
the larger scale he scouts ; he has no patience with " philosophi- 
cal " histories. He does not want to have great events traced to 
their chief causes ; he prefers that they should remain in mystery. 
He lays his ban on all attempts to give reasons for the ' French 
Revolution.* 

" To gauge and measure this immeasurable Thing, and what is called 
account fur it, and reduce it to a dead logic-formula, attempt not ! . . . 
As an actually existing Son of Time, look witii unspeakable manifold inter- 
est, oftenest in silence," &c. 

Yet in the dramatic form, he does, as a matter of fact, give the 
commonplace explanation, that the masses found the yoke of their 
superiors intolerable. 

Carlyle has his doubts about the propriety of making History a 
schoolmistress. " Before Philosophy can teach by Experience," he 
says, "the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must 



176 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

be gathered and intelligibly recorded." Yet, like most other his- 
torians, he makes use of history to illustrate his peculiar doctrines, 
ethical, religious, and political. Not that he is, like Macaulay, 
continually building up arguments in support of his views. He 
does not argue, he declaims. He sets up certain men, Oliver 
Cromwell and the two Friedrichs, as shining examples of Duty, 
Veracity, and Justice, and upon every colourable opportunity ex- 
tols them for their exercise of these, his favourite virtues. He is 
drawn to the Great IJebe'lion, because it affords "the last glimpse 
of the Godlike vanishing from this England ; conviction and vera- 
city giving place to hollow cant and formulism." He loves and 
praises old Friedrich in spite of his ungovernable temper, because 
"he went about sui>pressing platitudes, ripping off futilities, turn- 
ing deceptions inside out;" because "the realm of Disorder, which 
is Unveracity, Unreality, what we call Chaos,has no fiercer enemy." 
He writes the history of young Friedrich, although " to the last a 
questionable hero," because he was an able ruler, and "had noth- 
ing whatever of the Hypocrite or Phantasm." In every case he 
takes for granted the excellence of his favourite virtues; more than 
that, he tacitly assumes and maintains that they atone for every 
other immorality. His excuses of old Friedrich's severities on the 
score of justice, have called out loud expressions of indignation 
from the reviewers of his History. 

Farther, he has not escaped the imputation of colouring charac- 
ters and garbling facts under the bias of his narrow standard of 
morality. In the opinion of a distinguished French critic, he has 
misconceived and distorted the history of the French Revolution 
from a habitual effort to vilify whoever has a different theory of 
life from himself. 

For suoh as are not repelled by his many eccentricities and 
arrogant judgments, Carlyle's histories possess an intense charm. 
Without recurring to the elements of power in his style, we here 
glance briefly at his use of the opportunities peculiar to narrative. 

The interest of his narrative is very largely personah Scenery 
and military movements he describes with the most graphic power ; 
but he is constantly at the right hand of individuals rejoicing in 
their strength as the i)rinie movers of great transactions. He 
records public transactions, but he keeps his heroes in the fore- 
ground or stays with them in the background as the centres of 
power. In our small quotations to show his mode of explaining 
events, this ai)pears incidentally ; but no illustration could bring 
out fully what is so pervading a character of all his histories. He 
gives the prominence to individuals on principle : assigning to 
"great men," "heroes," a prodigious influence on the affairs of 
the world, he carries this so far as to think their sayings and 



ExrosiTiox. 177 

doings alone worthy of permanent record. Tittle-tattle about 
inferior personages, Acts of Parliament., and suclilike, he makes 
over to Dryasdust; and certainly his intensely personal method 
has the adviintage in point of sensational interest. His exaltation 
of heroes, if not the most accurate way of representing human 
transactions, is doubtless the most artistic : every drama requires 
a central figuie. 

With his strong sense of dramatic effect Carlyle's plot would be 
almost as absoibing as a sensational novel, were we not generally 
awaie beforehand from other sources what is to be the upshot. 
Judge by reading, for example, his account of the Crown-Prince's 
attempted flight from the cruelties of old Friedrich. Kote also, 
generally, his art of introducing a name with some such phrase as 
"Mark this man well ; we shall perhaps hear of him again." 

The interest in the progress of mankind, so notable in JMacaulay, 
is greatly wanting in Carlyle. There could hardly be a greater 
contrast than between the glowing optimist and the despairing 
prophet ; between the hopeful opening of the ' History of England ' 
and the doleful opening of the 'Letters and Speeches of Oliver 
Cromwell.' In Carlyle's histories, the absorbing interest of suc- 
cession, of gradual development, is not wanting; but it is the 
interest of i)lnt, of suspended expectation, not the cheering inter- 
est of increase in human wellbeing. To the patriotic Prussian, 
indeed, his ' History of Friedrich ' would be exhilarating, as show- 
ing the gradual advance of the House of Brandenburg: and even 
the philanthropist might rejoice to see the people prospering under 
the rule of Friedrich. But little encouragement to jubilation of 
any kind is given by the sardonic historian. His eye is rather on 
the Phantasms that remain, than on the Phantasms that have been 
trodden under foot. 

Exposition, 

From Carlyle the student will learn no delicate arts of exposition. 
In considering the intellectual qualities of his style, sim])licity and 
clearness, we saw what he does to make himself readily and dis- 
tinctly intelligible. With his immense command of words he is 
able to repeat his doctrines in great variety of forms. He is most 
profuse in similitudes. The two great drawbacks to his powers of 
exposition are, (i) that he deliberately prefers imperfect hints and 
figurative sayings to complete and plain expression ; and (2) that 
his examples are not typical cases, but selected for stage effect. 

His character-drawing is one of his chief distinctions. It is 
elaborately studied, and in many points the execution is admir- 
able. His sketch of the outward man seldom fails to be felici- 
tous ; not groping about confusedly in minor details of feature or 

u 



178 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

of figure, but dashing oflF the general likeness with bold compre- 
hensive strokes. — See his description of George's two mistresses 
(p. 153), and Meiitzel (p. 150). His description of Leibnitz ia 
also good as regards the externals, though perhaps it would bear 
filling out in other respects : " Sage Leibnitz, a rather weak, but 
hugely ingenious old gentleman, with bright eyes and long nose, 
with vast black peruke and bandy legs." These are but slender 
specimens of his art, probably far from being the best that could 
be produced; but the reaiSer will have no difficulty in finding 
others ; he describes every person that crosses his pages. 

As a rule, he is satisfied with a few suggestive strokes ; but 
occasionally he fills in the picture. When he does so, he gives the 
general view first, and then tells of particular after particular, 
deliberately, and with some similitude or collateral circumstance 
to fix each particular distinctly in the mind. His description of 
Friedrich in the two first pages of his history, is one of his most 
finished delineations. 

He carries the same art of clear broad touches into his descrip- 
tion of character. He is not perverted by likes or dislikes from 
trying to give the broad outlines truly; as a rule, he looks at a 
character only with the eye of an artist : and as a rule, his vigor- 
ous portraiture of the general temperament is true to nature. An 
example or two will show how he always aims at comprehensive 
general views. We take them at random : — 

"This Jocelin, as we can discern well, was an ingenious and ingenuons, a 
cheery- hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd noticintj quick-witted man ; and 
from under liis monk's cowl has looked out on that narrow section of the 
world in a leally human manner ; not in any simial, canine, ovine, or other- 
wise inhuman manner," &c. 

" The eupeptic, right-thinking nature of the man ; his sanguineous temper, 
with its vivacity and sociMlity. an ever-busy ingenuity, rather small jierhaps, 
but prompt, hopeful, useful, always with a good dash, too, of Scotch shrewd- 
ness, Scotch canniness ; and then a loquacity, free, fervid, yet judicious, 
canny, — in a word, natural vehemence, wholcsmnt ly covered over and tem- 
yiered (as San dio has it) in 'three inches of oM Christian/ai/' — all these 
fitted Baillie to be a leader in General Assemblies," &c. 

In these short dashing portraitures, perhaps the only thing worth 
objecting to is a certain want of order. It is when we come to the 
minute detail of character that we become conscious of a weakness 
in the scientific foundations. Carlyle's failure should warn all of 
the danger of despising psychological analysis, and at the same 
time producing an analysis made out by common-sense with the 
assistance of capricious fancy. De Quincey had too clear an insight 
to fall into such a blunder; he had no hope even of criticit;m, 
unless it was to be based on accurate psychology. Contempt for 
psychology usually implies bad psychology ; contempt for analysis, 



PERSUASION. 17y 

bail analysis. Emphatically is it so witli Carlyle. Avowing a 
contempt for analysis, he rushes with analytic assertions into 
regions where the ablest analyst trends with caution, and commits 
blunders that the'poorest analyst would be ashamed of. We had 
occasion to note (p. 141) his view about the asi^ociation of intellect 
with moral worth, and of a sense of the ridiculous with moral 
worth. Take this other statement of his favourite doctrine : — 

"The thinkinf^ and the moral nature, distinguished by the necessities of 
speech, have no suili distinction in themselves ; but rightly examined, ex- 
liihit in every case the strictest syni|i;illiy and coirespondcnce ; are, indeed, 
but different phases of the same indissoluble unity — a living mind." 

Now, here the division into tliinking nature and moral nature 
is an analysis, just as the division into intellect and worth and 
a faculty of laughter is an analysis. These are distinguished, he 
says, by the necessities of speech ; but does he suppose that the 
])sychologist makes any other than a verbal distinction 1 The 
difference is this : the scientific analyst distinguishes with care, 
common speech distinguishes w-ithout care. To prefer the com- 
mon-speech analysis to the scientific, is to prefer unskilled labour 
to skilled labour ; amateur analysis is not likely to be much more 
valuable than amateur shoemaking. 

Persuasion. 

Carlyle's way of making converts is, as we have seen, the way 
of the declaiming prophet, not of the supple plausible debater, or 
of the solid logician. He appeals almost exclusively to the feel- 
ings, not to the reason ; and issues his lamentations and denuncia- 
tions, his Jeremiads and Isaiads, without the slightest attempt to 
conciliate opponents. 

His oratory is emj)loyed jiartly on political, partly on moral 
subjects. His political influence has been insignificant, smaller 
perhaps than has been exercised by any political adviser of mod- 
erate ability; his moral intiuence has been considerable. 

What chiefly cii])ples his influence, is the arrogant tone of his 
assertions, his total disregard for the feelings and cherished opin- 
ions of those addressed. A prophet after this strain can win over 
at first only the few accidentally predisposed to agree with him. 
With these few all his grandeur and copiousness is overwhelming; 
they bdcomc at once his intense admirers and adherents. 

For bringing over such as are not prepared, to jump to his con- 
clusions, he exerts little influence, except the intrinsic attractions 
of his style. A reailer is disposed to view with favour opinions 
clothed in a vesture so brilliant : in admiring the fresh original 
diction, the gorgeous figures, the soaring declamations, the vivid 
powers of description and narration, one is in danger of being made 



180 TlIO^tAS CAKLYLE. 

captive to the doctrines. With those that do not admire tlie style, 
whose teeth are set on edge by the outrages on propriety of ex- 
pression, the prophet's force tells the other way. To many, also, 
his vituperative eloquence, in spite of its undercurrent of geniality, 
is offensive. With readers so disposed he is far from gaining 
ground; every fresh efFusiou widens the breach. 

One of the most amiable features in his preaching is the consol- 
ing of the humble worker under difficulties. He has many ingeni- 
ous turns of thought and expression for coining good out of evil, 
and beguiling the miserable out of their distresses. He comforts 
the feeble by assuring them with his utmost grandeur of language 
that in the end right becomes might ; that justice, however long 
delayed, will at length visit the oppressor. He contends with 
Plato that the victim of wrong suffers less than the wrong-doer; 
and talks of " only suffering inhumainty not being it or doing it." 
If a man has genius, "he is admitted into the West-End of the 
Universe." " Man's unhappiness comes of his greatness." Had 
we "half a universe," "there would still be a dark spot in our 
sunshine." He sets the performance of Duty high above every 
other consideration. He often declaims against conventional stand- 
ards of respectability ; and cheers the poverty-stricken with such 
"wine and oil" as the following: — 

*' And now what is thy property ? That parchment title-deed, thnt purse 
thou buttonest in ttiy bn-crhes-pocket ? Is that tli}' valuable ^noiierty? 
Unhappy brother, most poor insolvent brother, I without ])aic]inient at nil, 
with juirse olteuest in the Ihiecid state, imponderous, whieh will not fling 
afjainst the wind, have quite other property than that ! 1 have the mir.ao 
ulous breath of Life in me, breathed into my nostrils by Almighty God." 



PART II. 



ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS IN 
HISTORICAL ORDER. 



CHAPTER L 



Peose Writers before 15 So. 

FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 

Sir John Mandeville, 1300-1371. — The earliest book of prose able 
to take for itself a place in our literature, was a book of Travels 
by Sir John IMandeville. 

In the various manuscript collections of Early English composi- 
tions are to be found prose fragments written before Mandeville's 
work. Some of these have been printed by the Early English 
Text Society — namely, Homilies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth 
Centuries ; the Ayenbyte of Inwyt, illustrating the Kentish dialect 
in 1340; also, from a j\IS. of the fifteenth century, some fragments 
by the ascetic Yorkshire preacher, Kichard Rulle de Hampole, 
who died in 1349. I>ut these fragments are inconsiderable; and 
seeing that they had not vitality enough to keep themselves alive, 
they must not be allowed to take away from Mandeville the 
honour of being the Eatlier of English Prose. Mr Henry Morley 
calls him "our first prose writer in formed English," and says 
" that with him and \\'iclif begins, at the close of the period of the 
Formation of the Language, the true modern history of English 
Prose." 

Mandeville professes to write what he had seen and heard in the 
course of thirty-four years of travel in the East. Nearly all that 
is known of his life may be given in his own words : — 

" I, John Manndevylle, knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was bom 
in Eiitiloiul, in the Town of Seynt Alhoufs, passed the See in the Zeer of our 
Lord jesu Crist MCCCXXII., in the day of Seynt Michelle ; and hidre to 
have ben lons^e tyuie over the See, and liave seyn and goii thorghe nianye 
dyverse Loudes, and many I'rovynces and Kiiigdouies, and lies, and have 



184 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580. 

passed thorglie Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye thelitylle and the grete; thorglie 
Lybye, Calilee, and a gret partie of Ethiope ; tliorghe Amazoyne, Iiide the 
lasse and the inoie, a giet ['artie ; and tliorghe out in^iiy othere lies, that 
ben abouten lude ; where dwellen many dyverse Fulkes, and of dyverse 
Maneres and Lawes, and of dyverse tSchappes of Men." 

Besides this, we know that before leaving England he studied 
physic, a branch of knowledge that the traveller would find service- 
able wherever he went. He is said to have returned to England 
in 1356, and to have then written his book in Latin, in French, 
and in English : — 

"And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have pnt this Boke out of Latyn 
into Frensche, ;ind translated it azen ont of Frensche into Englyssclie, that 
every man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it." 

His book completed, he seems to have been again seized with 
his passion for travel. He is said to have died at Liege in 137 1. 

There being no printing-press in England till the last quarter of 
the fifteenth century, Mandeville's book of Travels was not printed 
till more than a century after his death ; but immediately upon its 
composition, it began to circulate widely in manuscript. It was 
translated into Italian by Pietro de Cornero, and printed at Milan 
in 1480. It was first printed in England in 1499, when an edition 
was issued by Wynkyii de Worde. 

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1323-1400.— Of the 'Canterbury Tales' two 
are in ])rose— the "Parson's Tale" and the "Tale df Meliboeus." 
The "Tarson's Tale" is a long and somewhat tedious discourse on 
the Seven Deadly Sins ; the " Tale of Meliboeus " (and his wife 
Prudence) is an allegory, closely translated from a French treatise. 
Neither of them has the spirit of Chaucer's verse, and they would 
hardly have been preserved had they appeared in less illustrious 
company. 

Besides these tales, he wrote in prose a translation of the ' De 
Consolatione Philosophic ' of Boethius, date unknown ; and a 
' Treatise on the Astrolabe,' addressed to his son Lewis, conjectured 
date 1391. 

John de Wycliffe, Wicliffe, or Wyclif, the Eeformer, 1324-1384, 
although he wrote mostly in Latin, and probably wrote little in 
English till near the close of his life, was the most eminent and 
influential writer of English prose in the fourteenth century. Mr 
Shirley's conjecture is that he did not begin to use the vernacular 
in controversy till after the great Western Schism under the anti- 
pope Clement in 1378. In his opinion "half the English religious 
tracts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been assigned 
to him in the absence of all external, and in defiance of all internal 
evidence." The reader may be referred to Mr Arnold's ' Select 
English Works of Wyclif ' for examples of what may reasonably be 



JOHX DE WYCLTFFE, WICLTFFK, Oil WYCLIF. 185 

ascribed to the ]icn of the great rcfonnor, -when every allowance 
is made for the extreme difficulty of identifying works that have 
remained in manuscript till within recent years. Mr Matthew's 
edition for the English Text Society of certain other writings may 
also be recommended, as well for tlie interest of the subjects, as 
for the careful and thorough introductory biography. 

In tlie account of WycliflVs life, prefixed to his edition of the 
'Fasciculi Zizaniornm,' I\Ir Shirley argued strongly against several 
traditional views. One of his chief points was that Wyclitfe has 
been confounded with another man of the same name, and that it 
was this other Wycliffe whose appointment to the Wardensliip of 
Canterbury Hall in 1365 was disputed, and finally set aside by 
the Pope. This theory, however, has by no means been unani- 
mously adopted. Mr Matthew follows Lechler in rejecting it. 
Many of the incidents in Wycliffe's life are still matter of dis- 
pute, lie was a Yorkshireman, born in 1324 at Spreswell or 
Ipswell, near Wyclif. He studied at Oxford ; but no jDirticulars 
of his life are known till 1361, when he appears as ^Master of 
Balliol. In this year he was presented to the rectory of Kyling- 
ham in Lincolnshire, and shortly after went there to reside. In 
1363, having taken a doctor's degree, he used the privilege of 
lecturing in divinity at Oxford. At this date he broached no 
doctrinal heresy, but assailed abuses in Church government, especi- 
ally recommending himself to the Court by his attacks on the tem- 
poral power of the Pope, and by defending Parliament's refusal to 
recognise the Pope's claim for arrears of tribute. In 136S, to be 
nearer Oxford, he obtained the living of Ludgershall in Pucking- 
hamshire. In 1374 he was one of a legation sent by Edward III. 
to arrange some ditficulties with the Pope. On his return he was 
presented to the living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which 
was his home for the remainder of his life. Prom 1378 ^Ir Shirley 
dates a new stage in the reformer's career. He then became more 
exclusively theological. At what date he began his great enter- 
jirise of translating the Bible into English is not ascertained. So 
long as he attacked only the pretensions of Church dignitaries, he 
was supported by the Court against their attempts at revenge. 
But when in T3S0 he began to attack the doctrines of the Church, 
and proclaimed his heresy on transubstantiation, the Court dared 
no longer support him. He was banished from Oxford ; and 
nothing but his death in 1384 could have saved him from further 
persecutions. 

That it should be difficult to identify "WyclifTe's writings is not 
to be wondered at, when we remember that in those days tracts 
and books circulated only in manuscript. WyclitTe towering so 
high above other tireologians of the time, his name could not fail 
to become a nucleus for all writings of a reforming tenor. His 



186 PllOSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580. 

translation of the Bible, completed in 1383, and used as the basis 
for subsequent versions, was not printed for centuries. His New 
Testament first appeared in 1731, and the Old Testament was 
never printed till so late as 1850. 

The whole of the New Testament is said to be by Wycliffe's own 
hand. It can be conveniently seen and compared with other early 
versions in Bagster's 'English Hexajjla.' Energy and graphic 
vigour are the characteristics of his controversial prose. 

The only other name usually mentioned among the prose writers 
of the fourteenth century is John de Trevisa, who in 1387 trans- 
lated Higden's ' Polychronicon.' The translation was printed in 
1482 by Caxton, who took upon him "to change the rude and 
old English " — an evidence of the rapid growth of the language. 
Trevisa is said to have made other translations from the Latin. 
Of a translation of the Scriptures said to have been executed by 
him nothing is now known. 

FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

Prose writers in this century are not numerous, and their works 
contain little to tempt anybody but the antiquary. Indeed, up to 
the last quarter of this century there was little inducement to cul- 
tivate the vernacular. A work, as we have said, circulated only 
in manuscript ; and the learned, chiefly clergymen, addressed their 
brethren in Latin. The following are the most famous of those 
that wrote in the mother tongue. 

Reynold Pecock, 1390-1460.— The Bishop of Chichester followed 
Wyclitl'e in denying the infallibility of the Pope, and in upholding 
the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith. He also questioned the 
doctrine of transubstantiation. He opposed the persecution of 
the Lollards; urged that the Church should reason them out of 
their heresy, not burn them ; and set an example of this more 
humane way in a work entitled ' Repressor of overmuch blaming 
of the Clergy.' This curious work is reprinted in the Rolls series, 
edited by Mr Babington. The prose style is much more formal 
and less homely than Wycliffe's, being elaborately periodic. When 
taken to task for his heterodoxies, he recanted ; and thus escaping 
martyrdom, was imprisoned for the rest of his life in Thorney 
Abbey. 

Sir John Fortescue, 1395-1483. — Legal and political writer, 
author of a Latin work, ' De Laudibus Legum Anglise ' (concern- 
ing the excellence of the laws of England), and an English work, 
' The Diiference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, as 
it more particularly regards the English Constitution.' These are 
perhaps the first works that avow in their title the strong English 



JOHN CAPGllAVE. — WILLIAM CAXTON. 187 

jiride of country. The one extols the English upon the ground of 
their civil law, and the other sets forth the superiority of the Eng- 
lish people to the French. 

In his ' De Laudibus,' Fortescue calls himself Cancellarius 
Anglice, Chancellor of England ; but this title seems to have been 
no better thau the titles conferred by James VII I. at St Germains. 
He was Chief-Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of Henry 
VI., fled with that prince after the battle of Towton, was probably 
made Chaucellor when in exile, returned with Margaret and Prince 
Edward, was taken prisoner at Tewkesbury in 147 1, made his sub- 
missinn to Edward IV., and spent the close of his life in retirement 
at Ebrington in Gloucestershire. 

His 'Monarchy' was first printed in 17 14 by his descendant, 
Baron Fortescue, the friend of Pope. The ' De Laudibus ' is more 
famous; it was translated into English in 15 16, and subsequently 
annotated by Selden, the antiquary. 

John Capgrave, 1393 — , born at Lyune, educated probably at 
Cambridge, m;vde Provincial of the Order of Austin Friars in Eng- 
land, was one of the most learned men of his time, a voluminous 
author in Latin, and wrote a biography and a chronicle in English. 
The 'Chronicle of England' is reprinted in the Master of the Rolls 
series of Chronicles. It begins with the Creation, and is distin- 
guished by its conciseness. 

William Caxton, the Printer, 1420-1492. — Printing was intro- 
duced into England not by scholars, but by an enterprising English 
merchant, who had lived for more than thirty years in Jh-uges, then 
the capital of the Duke of Burgundy, and a great centre of literary 
activity as well as trade. Caxton settled in Ijruges as a merchant, 
after serving his apprenticeship to an eminent mercer in London : 
rose in time to be " Governor of the English Nation," or English 
Consul, at Bruges; and on the marriage of Edward IV. 's sister, 
Margaret, with Charles of Burgundy, in 146S, entered her service, 
probably as her business agent. Book-collecting and book-making 
had been for years, and more particularly under Phili[) the Good, 
an ardent fashion at the Court of Burgundy. Caxton caught the 
enthusiasm, and translated into English a version of the ' History 
of Troy,' made by Le Fevre, one of the royal chaplains. His ver- 
sion was admired. He was asked for co|!ies of the work. This 
turned his attention to the art of printing — introduced about that 
time into Bruges by Colard Mansion, an ingenious member of the 
craft of hook -copying. It occurred to him apparently that it would 
be a good speculation to set up a printing-press in London. The 
first book issued by Caxton that liears the Westminster imprint, 
•was a translation of ' The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers' 
— " enprynted at Westmestre," 1477. But Mr Blades, the great 
authority on the subject, puts it eighth in the list of books printed 



188 PROSE WKITEKS BEFORE 1580. 

by Caxton — the ' History o^ Troy,' and six others, having probably 
been printed by him abroad before his resettlement in his native 
country. 

Caxton's printing-press gave an immense impulse to writing in 
the English tongue. In the first ten years after its estal)lishment, 
probably more English was written for publication than had been 
written in the two preceding centuries. His press gave to tho 
world no less than sixty-four books, nearly all in English. 

His ^publications were mostly translations from French and 
Latin, many of them made by himself. They include religious 
books of a popular cast — ' Pilgrimage of the Soul,' ' The Golden 
Legend ' (Lives of the Saints), ' The Life of St Catherine of Sens : ' 
books of romance — ^lalory's ' Mort d'Artur,' ' Godfrey of Boloyn,' 
' The Book of the Order of Chivalry,' ' The History of the Noble, 
Right Valiant, and Right Worthy Knight Paris, and of the Fair 
Vienne : ' and some of the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. 
Caxton's books are a good index to the taste of the time, because 
he published as a man of business, not for the learned, but for the 
general reader and book-buyer. He was a fluent translator him- 
self, not careful of his style, like P)ishop Pecock, for exauiple, but 
rough and ready, following his French originals in idiom. He 
s^joke with quite a courtly air about the rude old English of the 
previous century, and was sharply taken to task by Skelton for his 
presumption. His own English differs somewhat in diction, but 
not so much in the words used as in the greater copiousness of ex- 
pression and greater al)un(lance of French idiom. 

Robert Fabyan, or Fabian, who died in 15 12, is usually counted 
among the authors of this century. His ' Concordaynce of Stories,' 
generally known as Fabyan's Chronicle, is the first attempt to write 
history in English prose. An alderman and a sheriff of London, 
he seems to have pursued literature to the damage of his business ; 
for in 1502 he withdrew from office on the ground of poverty. In 
all likelihood he had composed his Chronicle after his retirement 
from the cares of official life. 

The Concordance, compiled from older sources, as the name 
indicates, narrates the history of Biitain from the landing of 
Brutus the Trojan down to 1485. It is most minute in the detail 
of facts and fictions, making no attempt to distinguish between 
great events and small. One of its most authentic records is a 
full and pjirticular account of the successive Lord Mayors of Lon- 
dim. — riie book was not published till 15 16, four years after the 
author's death. 

One or two other names of this century have been preserved. 
Juliana Berners (of uncertain date, sui)posed 1390-1460) deserves 
mention as the first of her sex to publish a book in English. She 



JOHN BOURCHIER. — SIR THOMAS MO. 189 

was pi-ioress of Sopewell Nunnery, near St Albans, was — like the 
gentlewomen of the period — fond of hawking and hunting, and 
wrote a treatise on these sports. Sir Thomas Malory (fi. 1470) 
is known as the translator and comijiler of the ' History of King 
Arthur,' printed by Caxton in 1485. To this century belong also 
traiisbitions of various romances from the French, occupied chiefly 
with the acts of the Round Table Knights and the Seer Merlin; 
also the Paston Letters, supposed date, 1422, 

FIRST HALF OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

With the sixteenth century our prose literature begins a new 
era, though the writers are still far from being of any use as models 
of style. In spite of the encouragement given to English writing 
by the estal)lislinient of printing, some of the most distinguished 
authors of the time wrote chieily in Latin, being ambitious of a 
wider audience than the English-reading public. The higli-minded 
Bishop Fisher, who in 1535, at the age of seventy-five, was put 
to death for denying the king's ecclesiastical su|iremacy, wrote 
copiously in Latin in defence of the Catholic tenets, and left only 
a few sermons in English. Bishop Bale, a generation later (1495- 
1563), a cham{)ion on the Piotestant side, is known chiefly by his 
'Lives of Eminent English Writers, from Japhet down to 1559,' a 
work written in Latin. He wrote in English some bitter contro- 
versial tracts, and an account of the examination and death of the 
Protestant martyr Sir John Ohlcastle. Sir Thomas More wrote 
his 'Utopia' in Latin. Still, this century begins with a greatly 
increased activity in the production of oriuinal English works. 

John Bourchier, Lord Berners, 1474-1532, is known chiefly as 
the translator of ' Froissart's Chronicles.' He was Chancellor of 
the Exchequer and Governor of Calais, and undertook the transla- 
tion, which was puMished in 1523, at the request of the king. It 
was reprinted in 181 2 in the series of English Chronicles. Ber- 
ners made one or two other translations from French and Sjianish. 
As an educated man and a courtier, he wrote without pedantry the 
best English of the time; and by that time, chiefly under Italian 
influence, a much more ornate, balanced, and compact style began 
to come into u>e. If we compare any of Caxtou's translations 
with Berners's Froissart, we are struck at once with a decided ad- 
vance in ))oint of form. By the end of Henry VIII. 's reign, we 
can distinctlj' see the stylistic tendency which reached an extrava- 
gant height in the prose of .John Lyly. 

Sir 'Ihomas More, 1430-1535, first; layman Cliancellor of Eng- 
land, author of ' Utopia,' is perhaps the first of our wiiiers whose 
prose displays any genius ; and his ' Life of Edward V.' is j)ro- 
nounced by Mr Hallam 10 be "the first example of good English 



190 PKOSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580. 

language, pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms 
or pedantry." 

More's life is well known ; he ranks with Sir Philip Sidney as 
one of the most popular characters in our history. His father was 
Sir John More, a judge of the Court of King's Hench. Admitted 
as a page to the household of Cardinal Morton at the age of fifteen, 
he was sent thence to Oxford, where he made the acquaintance of 
Erasmus. Under his pleasant exterior there was a vein of gravity 
and asceticism ; and after leaving Oxford he had thoughts of be- 
coming a monk. This desire passed away ; he settled dnwn to the 
practice of the law, soon rose to distinction, was made under- 
sheriff of London, and obtained a seat in Parliament in 1504. He 
offended Henry VII. by opposing a subsily; and, retiring from 
public life, probably busied himself with his ' Life of Edward V.,' 
till the accession of Henry VJIL let him resume his profession. 
With Henry he became a great favourite, and in 1529, on the fall 
of Wolsey, was made Chancellor. A stanch adherent to the Church 
of Rome, he is said to have practised in his chancellorship severities 
against the Reformers very inconsistent with the theory of the 
' Utopia.' When Henry broke with Rome, the Chancellor would 
not follow him, and sufiered death rather than take an oath affirm- 
ing the validity of the King's marrias^^e with Anne Eoleyn. He 
was beheaded in 1535, acting u(> to his Utopian precept that a 
man should meet death with cheerfulness. 

The ' Utopia,' written, as we have said, in Latin, was first 
printed in 1516 at Louvain. His principal English work is the 
' Life and Reign uf Edward V. and of his Brother, and of Richard 
IIL,' our first prose composition worthy of the title of history. 
He was also a voluminous writer of controversy, publishing more 
than 1000 pages folio against Tyndale ; and a letter to his wife 
that has chanced to be preserved is often quoted. 

The ' Utopia,' though written in Latin, is always reckonnd as 
an English work, and is the chief support of More's place in Eng- 
lish literature. The dramatic setting of the work is done with 
great ingenuity and humorous circumstantiality. More professes 
to be only a transcriber; he simply writes down what he remem- 
bers of a conversation with a restless traveller, Raphael Hythloday. 
Ral[)h had met in his travels with the commonwealth of Utopia 
(Nowliere), and jNIore draws him out to give an account of it. 
Ralph is thus an earlier Teufelsdroeckh, as Utopia is an earlier 
Weissnichtwo. Under the dramatic guise, disclaiming all respon- 
sibility for the opinions, More utters freely political advice that 
might have been unpalatable but for its witty accom[)animents of 
time, place, and circumstance. 

The work is full of grajihic personal descriptions, and of humour 
that has a freshness almost unique after such a lapse of time. As 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 191 

a small sample of his picturesque description, take the first appear 
auce of Hythloday. On leaving church at Antwerp one day, 
sauntering out — 

"I chanced to espy tliis foresaid Peter (Giles) talkinc; \\'ith a certain 
stranger, a man well stricken in ai;i', witli a black sunlmrnt face, a lono; 
beard, ami a cloak c;ist lioniely about his slioulders, whom by his favour and 
apparel forthwitii I jiui^'ed to be a iiuuiner." 

A fair specimen of his humour is his pretended difficulties in 
finding out exactly where Utopia lay. lie let off Raphael without 
minute questioning, so occupied was he with the peculiarities of 
the place ; then he wrote to his friend Giles, who found the travel- 
ler, and asked the particulars of latitude and longitude ; but un- 
fortunately at the critical moment a servant came and whispered 
Raphael, and when the story was taken up again after this inter- 
ruption, some person in the I'oom had a tit of coughing, so that 
Giles lost "certain of the words." Throughout Robinson's trans- 
lation of the ' Utopia,' the translator is so full of admiration that 
be cannot refrain from marginal remarks, such as, '• O wittie head," 
"a prettie fiction and a wittie," "mark tiiis w-ell." 

Of late years the 'Utopia' has been sometimes quoted as con- 
taining lessons for the. present day. As a matter of fact, More 
gives us no lesson that we do not get from living preachers in 
forms more directly adapted to our time — the main pleasure in 
reading him apart from his humour and picturesqueness is the 
surprise of finding in the 'Utopia' doctrines that have been 
preached in these latter days and considered noveh Curiously 
enough, the chief author of our time anticipated by the "merry, 
jocund, and pleasant" More, is the grimly humorous, vehement, 
and defiant "8eer of Chelsea," Mr Carlyle. The difference of 
manner makes the coincidence of matter all the more striking. 
We find lealised in the 'Utopia' Mr Carlyle's main jiolitical 
doctrines : his hatred of idleness and love of steady indn.stry, his 
model aristocracy, his " Captains of Industry," his treatment of 
malefactors, and his grand specific for an overcrowded country — 
emigration. The Utopians are a sober, industrious, thrifty people ; 
jewellery and fine clothes they put away with childhood; they 
have no idle rich, they leave hunting to the butchers; the chief 
duty of their magistrates the Syphogrants is, "to see and take 
heed that no man sit idle ; " they enslave their malefactors, give 
them a peculiar dress, cut off the tij)s of their ears, hire them out 
to work, and punish desertion with death : when their children 
become too numerous, they found a colony. 

All this is a curious anticipation of the ' Latter-Day Pamphlets ' ; 
and in More we meet with many other things that we are accus- 
tomed to think peculiarly motlcrn. lie makes some pleasant play 



192 PKOSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580. 

on the pedantic worsliip of antiquity, and the over-honoured " wis- 
dom (if our ancestors." lie brings against the capital punishment of 
theft the same argument that ^Maraulay, in tlie Indian Penal Code, 
urged against the capital punishment of rape. Some years ago we 
heard much about the depopulation of the Higlilands of Scotland 
to make deer-parks : More has a similar complaint to make ; in 
his day the high price of English wool tempted landlords to eject 
husbandmen, and tui-n arable land into sheep-pastures. 

The 'Utopia' was first translated by Ralph Robinson in 1551. 
It was again translated by Bishop Burnet in 1684. Both trans- 
lations have often been reprinted, and others have been made. 
Robinson's translation is included in Arber's series of ' English 
Reprints,' 1869. 

If we compare Robinson's traiislation with the original or with 
Burnet's translation, we are struck with a peculiarity characteristic 
of our literature up to and including the age of Elizabeth. Roldn- 
son seldom translates an epithet with a single word ; he repeats 
two or even three words that are nearly synonymous. It would 
seem as if lie distrusted the expressiveness of the new language, 
and sought to convey the Latin meaning by showing it in as many 
aspects as our language permitted. " Plain, simple, and homely," 
"merry, jocund, and pleasant," "disposition or conveyance" of 
the matter, might be explained in this way. But the greater num- 
ber of the tautologies are the incontinence arising from want of 
art; couples are often used where the meaning of one would be 
amply apparent : thus—" I grant and confess," " I reckon and 
account," "tell and declare," "win and get," and so forth. 

Sir Thomas Elyot, 1487-1546, a man of admired integrity and 
of a genial didactic turn, who Avas employed by Henry VIII. on 
two of his most important embassies, was a miscellaneous writer 
of considerable range. His most famous work is ' The Governor,' 
Avhich deals chiefly with the subject of education. Besides this he 
wrote a medical and dietetic work, 'The Castle of Health,' com- 
posed ' Bibliotlieca EliotiB* (probably a work on the choice of 
books), and pretended to translate from the Greek a work called 
'The Image of Governance.' 

With More and Elyot may be mentioned their friend, though 
considerably their junior, John Leland (1506-1552), scholar and 
antiquary, author of 'The Itinerary.' 

Edward Hall, 1500-1547, is often coupled with Fabyan as one 
of the two beginners of English prose history. The title of his 
work is 'The Union of the two Noble and Illustrious Families of 
Lancaster and Yorke.' There is no particular reason for coup ing 
him with Fabyan. More comes between them as a historian with 
his Edward V. Hall was a man of better education than Fal>yan ; 
studied at Cambridge, went to the bar, and rose to be one of the 



GEOCGE CAVENDISH. — WILLIAM TVXDALE. 11)3 

judges of the slieriff's court. His style is nnt e^ual to Move's, and 
better than Fabyaii's. 

Sir Koger Ascham says that in " Hall's Chronicle much good 
matter is quite marred with indenture English ;ind . . . strange 
and inkhorn terms." 

The work was reprinted among the English Chronicles in 1809. 

George Cavendish, 1495(?'-1562 (0, geiitltm.-iii-usher to Cardinal 
Wolsey, and after Wolsey's death to Henry VIIL, wrute a biography 
of the Cardinal, which is reprinted in Wordsworth's ' Ecclesiastical 
Biograi)hy ' as a standard authority. Apart from its own worth, 
it is interesting as having furnished Shakspeare with particulars 
for his ' Henry VIIL' 

An edition, pulilished by Mr Singer in 1825, was accompanied 
with a proof that the author was George Cavendish, and not Wil- 
liam, as commonly reported. 

John Bellenden, Ballenden.or Ballentyne, Arch lean of ]\r(>ray, 
is the hrst Scotch writer of prose. He translated Boece's ' History 
of Scotland' (1536) and the first five books of Livy. His diction 
is very little diilerent from the ordinary English diction of that 
time. 

Translators of the Bible. — Between 1537 and 1539 appeared 
in rapul succession four translations of the Eible — Tyndale't, Cover- 
dale's, Matthew's, and Craniner's. 

William Tyndale, 1434-1536. — Trcmshition of New Testament, 
published at Aittircrp, 1526. — Little is known ot Tyndale's family. 
He was a native of Gloucestershire, his birthplace probal)ly North 
Nibley. He was educated at Oxford, and continued there prob- 
ably as a tutor till 15 19. Thereafter, being tutor in the family of 
Sir John Walsh, of Little Sodbury, in his native county, his anti- 
Popish views became known, exposed him to threats of censure, 
and finally made England t0(j hot for him, and drove him to 
Hamburg, 1523-24. Here he laboured at his translatitm of the 
Scriptures, holding, with the reformers of (!ermany and Switzer- 
land, that the Lible should be in every hand, not in tlie exclusive 
keeping of the Church. In 1524-25 he printed two editions of the 
New Testament by snatches at diilerent places, .subject to vexatious 
interruptions. In 1526 an edition was deliberately printed at 
Antwerp, and every endeavour used to sinutigle it into England. 
Turning next to the Old Testament, he translated the five liooks 
of Moses, which he jiublished in 1530. He revised his New Testa- 
ment in 1534. Hitherto he had escaped the agmts sent to hunt 
liini out and apprehend him. At last, in 1535, an emissary of the 
English Popish faction tracked him to Antwerp, obtained a war- 
rant from the Emperor, and lodged him in prison. In 1536 he 
was led to the .stake at Antwerp, strangled, and burnt. At that 
very time, the change having come in Henry's relations with the 

N 



194 PROSE WIIITERS BEFORE 1580. 

Pope, the King's printer in London was printing the first English 
edition of his New Testament. 

" Tyndale's translation of the New Testament is the most im- 
" purtaut philological monument of the first half of the sixteenth 
" century, perhaps, I should say, of the whole period between 
" Chaucer and Sliakspeare, both as a historical relic and as having 
•' more than anything else contributed to shape and fix the sacred 
" dialect, and establish the form which the Bible must permanently 
" assume in an English dress. The best features of the translation 
"of 16 1 1 are derived from the version of Tyndale, and thus that 
" remark.ible work has exerted, directly and indirectly, a more 
" powerful influence on the English language than any other single 
" production between the ages of Richard II. and Queen Elizabeth." 
— (Marsh's 'Lectures on the English Language.') 

Miles Coverdale, 1488-1569, published a translation of the whole 
Bil>le in 1537. His life was more prosperous than Tyndale's. 
Hardly any mention is made of him before the date of his transla- 
tion : he would seem to have worked in silence, until the times 
became favourable to open activity in the cause of tiie Reformed 
faith. He was made Bishop of Exeter in 155 1. During the reign 
of Mary he prudently retired to the Continent, returning on the 
accessinn of Elizabeth to his former dignity. He is said to have 
been a native of Yorkshire. His version of the New Testament 
differs but slightly from Tyndale's. He also wrote several tracts, 
1H)W muth in request among l)Ook-hunters. 

Miittknvs ])ihle, so called from the name on the title-page, was 
issued under the superintendence of John Rogers, the proto-martyr 
of the leign of Mary. It is not a new translation, but a revised 
edition of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament, with an 
amended version of Coverdale's translation for the rest of the 
Bible. Rogers was a native of Warwickshire, was educated at 
Cambridge, and became the disciple and friend of Tyndale at 
Antwerp, where he was chaplain to the English merchants. He 
married a German wife, and left ten children. 

Cranmers Bible (1540) took its name from the celebrate 1 Arch- 
bishop Cranmer, 1489-1556. It is substantially a new edition of 
Matthew's, revised by collation with the original Hebrew and 
Greek. 

Hugh Latimer, 1491-1555, one of the foremost champions of 
the Reformation, burnt by Queen Mary at Oxford, along with 
Cranmer and Ridley. He was born at Thurcaston in Leicester- 
shire, the son of a well-to-do yeoman. In 1505 he was sent to 
Cambridge, wheie in due course he became a resident Fellow. 
Always vehement and enthusiastic, he distinguished himself, like 
another Paul, by his strong attachment to the prevailing faith and 
his denunciations of the new light. About 152 1 he was converted 



HUGH LATIMER. 195 

by a priest whom he calls " Little Bilney," and immediately made 
himself obnoxious to "divers Pa))ists in the University" by the 
new direction of his zealous and powerful eloquence. He was 
brought before Wolsey, but the Cardinal found nothiug anii-s in 
liis preaching, and sent him away in triumph. When Henry 
wished to invalidate his marriage with Catherine, Latimer sat 
upon the question as one of a University Commission, and decided 
in the King's favour. Soon thereafter, in 1530, he was invited to 
Court, made a royal cliaplain, and in 1535, on the elevation of 
Cranmer to the see of Canterbury, Bishop of Worcester. Never 
inclined to look at the world on its favourable side, he signalised 
his preferment by denouncing, with characteristic vehemence, the 
abuses of the time, declaring that " bishops, abbots, priors, parsons, 
canons resident, priests and all, were strung thieves — yea, dukes, 
lords, and all ; " and that " bishops, abbots, with such other," should 
" keep hospitality to feed the needy people, not jolly fellows with 
golden chains and velvet gowns." In 1539 he got into trouble for 
refusing to sign the six Iiomanistic articles, resigned his bishopric, 
sought to retire into private life, but was seized, put in the Tower, 
and " commanded to silence." His voice is nor heard again till 
the reign of Edward VL, when he blazes out as the most stirring 
of the Jteforming preachers, and a man of importance at Court. 
When Edward died, everything was changed, and Latimer, with 
other conspicuous Protestants, suffered the last extreme of perse- 
cution. 

Latimer's sermons are still read with interest. They present an 
extraordinary contrast to modern sermons. In those days the 
ministers of the W^or.l diil not confine themselves to exegesis and 
morality in the abstract ; they addressed hearers by name, and 
singling out })articular classes, told them with some minuteness 
how to regulate their lives. Latimer took the utmost advantage 
of this licence of the pulpit, — told my Lord Chancellor of certain 
cases that he should attend to personally ; warned the King 
against liaving too many horses, too many wives, or too much 
silver and gold ; and ailmonished bishops and judges of their duty 
in the plainest terms. This was not all : in the witter he prob- 
ably did not go beyond the time ; in the manner, he was led by 
his excess of energy into eccentricities of diction and illustration 
rendered tolerable only by the jiower and freshness of his genius. 
His contemporaiies looked upon him much as the present genera- 
tion looks on Thomas Carlyle. Many could not endure his open 
defiance of conventionality, and could not speak of him with 
patience. These he outraged still more by replying to them from 
the pulpit. He says — 

"When I was in trouble, it was olijected and said unto me that I w.na 
singular, that uo man thought as I thought, that I loved a singularity in 



196 PROSE WrJTERS BEFORE 1580. 

all that I did, and tliat I took a way contrary to the King and the whole 
Parli iiiient, aud thnt I was travailed with them that had better wits than 
1 ; that 1 was contrary to them all." 

He then goes on to compare his case with Christ's, and draws 
a humorous ironical parallel between himself and Ii^aiah, with a 
quiint drollery, almost butfoonyry, not likely to conciliate those 
already offended by his eccentric power. 

He is often praised for his " vigorous Saxon." It is undoubtedly 
vigorous, and his illustrations have the stamp of genius. But to 
his cultivated hearers, the homely turns must have sounded like 
Yorkshire or broad Scotch in a modern discourse. It is not to be 
supposed that the Court of Edward VI. heard the following with- 
out a smile : — 

"In tlie Vir. of Jhon the Priests sent out certain of the Jews to bring 
Christ unto them violently. When they came into tlie temple and heard 
Hiin preach, they were so moved with His preaching that they returned 
home Moain aud said to them that sent tliem, JVunqiiani sic locutus est homo 
ut hie homo. There was never man spake like this man. Tlien answered 
the Pharisees. Nam et vos sedacti esUs ? What, ye brain-sick fouls, ye hoddy 
pecks, ye doddy polls, ye huddes, do ye believe ILLm ? Arc yuu seduced also? " 

Or the following : — 

" Germany was vi.sited XX. years with God's Word, but they did not 
earnestly embrace it, aud in life follow it, but made a mingle-inaugle and a 
hotch-j)otch of it. 

" I cannot tell what, partly Popery, partly true religion, mingled together. 
They say in my country when the}' call their hugs to the swine trongli : 
' Come to thy 'inincjle-mangle ; come pyr, covie pyr,^ — even so they made 
mingle-mangle of it." 

Latimer's " Sermon on the Plougher," and his " Seven Sermons 
before Edward VI.," are in Arber's series of Engli.sh Reprints. 
Several editions of his sermons were issued in the sixteenth 
century. 

John Foxe, 1517-1587, author of the 'Book of Martyrs,' a 
native of Lincolnshire. Having studied at Oxford and gained 
a fellowship, he became openly Protestant, and was expelled in 
1545. After various distresses, he had been but a short time 
comfortably settled as tutor to the Earl of Surrey when Mary as- 
cended the throne, and he had to fiee to the Continent and support 
himself by correcting proofs. After Mary's death he returned and 
was made a prebendary. His ' Book of Afartyrs ' is an interesting 
record, reprinted by various reliiiious societies : the facts are not 
much to be relied on, being based upon popular report, evidently 
little sifted. 

Sir John Cheke, 1514-1557, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, 
is best known by the impulse he gave to the stu<ly of Greek. His 
life was troubled; he had difficulties with Gardiner about certain 



THOMAS WILSON, — ROGER ASCHAM. 197 

innovations in the pronunciation of Greek, and on the accession of 
Mary had to tlee the country for his religion. After some years' 
precarious wandering, he was caught at Antwerp and brought 
back ; was ofiered the alternative of recantation or death ; re- 
canted, and soon after died of sh;ime and grief. 

His oidy English work is written against the insurrection of Ket 
the Tanner, its title is, ' The Hurt of Sedition, how grievous it ia 
to a Common wealtli.' 

THIRD QUARTER OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

About the beginning of this period we find a marked develop- 
ment of prose style. It begins to be more generally a subject 
of special study. Teachers in high places begin to theorise on 
the essentials of polite writing. 

Thomas Wilson, d, 1581, published an 'Art of Logic' in 1552, 
an ' Alt of Khetoiic ' in 1553. The latter is the first treatise on 
English composition. Wilson was a man of position, said to have 
been Dean of Durham, and to have held offices of state under Eliza- 
beth. He was not a dry and formal writer, but aimed at conveying 
instruction in an easy, familiar, and courtly style, expressly eschew- 
ing the terms of the schools. In this res])ect he often reminds 
us of Addison and the polite writers of Queen Anne's time. His 
' Rhetoric ' embraces much more than the mere art of composi- 
tion. It is a familiar treatise on the lines of Quintilian's rhetoric, 
such as might be written for the instruction of a young nobleman 
preparing to take a part in public life, the didactic being relieved 
by witty anecdotes. It deals with a good style among other 
requisites of oratorical success. Wilson made a stand for the 
purity of the " King's English."^ He ridiculed fops and scholars 
for talking Chaucer, and for larding their speech with French- 
English, with Italianated terms, with inkhorn terms, with " far- 
fetched colours of gay antiquity." "The unlearned or foolish 
fantastical . . . will so Latin their tongues that the simple 
. . . think surely they speak by some revelation." 

Roger Ascham, 1515-1568, is one of the best known men of his 
centur3\ He was more fortunate in his life than More, Latimer, or 
Cheke. He enjoyed a ]tension under Henry and Edward, had his 
pension not only continued but increased by Mary, was made her 
Latin Secretary ; after her death became a favourite with Elizabeth, 
continued to enjoy pension and secretaryship, taught Latin and 
Gn'ck to the learned Queen, and lived to write that, " in our fiire- 
f'ltkers time, Pajiistry as a standing pool covered and overflowed 
all England." The secret of his success was, that he held no 
strong opinions in religion, or, at any rate, kept them to himself. 
When at Cambridge he nearly lost his fellowship by indiscreetly 
^ He is, so far as we are aware, the first writer to use this expression. 



198 PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580. 

speaking against the Pope. Escaping shipwreck that time, he wa3 
careful never to offend again by an obtrusive profession of his 
faitk A Yorkshireman, son of Lord Scroop's steward, he had 
little of the Yorkshire vigour ; a man of delicate constitution, of 
gentle and polished manners ; noted for his tine penmanship and 
elegant scholarly acquirements, and having not a little of the 
dexterity of the courtier. 

The ' Toxophilus ' (1545) is a dialogue on archery, sustained by 
Philologus and Tosophilus — Lover of the Book, and Lover of the 
Bow. It gives the history of the bow, compares archery with 
other recreations, recommends it as an exercise for the student, 
tells the best kind of wood for the bow, discusses the art of shoot- 
ing, &c. ; above all, it declares what England owes to the bow, and 
urges every Englishman to practise the national weapon. Upon 
the merits of this side of the treatise he received his pension from 
Henry. The 'Schoolmaster' (published in 1570, after his death) 
discusses the readiest means of acquiring a knowledge of Latin, 
and criticises the style of Varro, Sallust, Cicero, and Caesar. In 
both * Toxophilus ' and the ' Schoolmaster ' he takes great liberty 
of digression, but does little to redeem his promise of great things 
under modest titles. He announced a ' Book of the Cockpit,' in 
defence of his fre(iuenting that place of amusement, but the work 
was never published. His chief service to English prose is the 
example he sets, as a scholar and a courtier, of writing in the 
vernacular. This service is acknowledged by Dr Nathan Drake. 
Thomas Fuller says of him — " He was an honest man, and a good 
shooter. x\rchery was his pastime in youth, which, in his old age, 
he exchanged for cock-fighting. His 'Toxophilus' is a good book 
for young men ; his 'Schoolmaster' for old ; his ' Epistles ' for all 
men." 

A collected edition of his English works was published in 1761. 
Another reprint in 18 15 is modernised, not only in the spelling but 
in the language. 

Sir Thomas North, a collateral ancestor of the Guilford family, 
issued in 1579 an English version of ' Plutarch's Lives,' rendered 
from the French translation by Amyot. The work was very 
popular, until superseded by Dryden's translation. It is closely 
followed by Shakspeare in ' Coriolanus,' 'Julius Caesar,' and ' An- 
tony and Cleopatra.' An earlier work of his — the ' Dial of 
Princes,' a translation of Guevara's 'El Libro de Marco Aurelio,' 
published in 1557 — is still more interesting for the history of 
prose style. It throws strong light on the derivation of Lyly's 
Euphuism (see p. 229). There are passages in it that might pass 
for Lyly's. 

Holinshed's 'Chronicle,' published about 1580, is known to 
many readers only from its being utilised by Shakspeare, who 



IIOLIXSITED, 199 

made Holinslied's translation of Roece the basis of ' ]\racbeth.' 
Jn the composition of his ' Chronicles,' which piot'ess to be a com- 
plete history of Great Britain and Ireland, Holinshed, himself a 
man of uncertain biography, had several assistants, whose lives are 
equally obscure. The prefatory account of England in the six- 
teenth century, the most valuable part of the work, w&s written 
by William Harrison ; the history and description of Ireland by 
Richard Stanlhurst. John Hooker, the Cliamberlain of Exeter, 
and uncle of "the judicious Hooker," is also said to have given 
some assistance^ 



CHAPTER 11. 



FROM 1580 TO 161O. 



SIB PHILIP SID]SrEY, 

1554— 1586. 

In the prose works of Sir Pliilip Sidney we discern an advance on 
the style of all preceding writers. The advance is not perhaps 
great : — we are not to suppose that prose style departed from the 
usual law of gradual progress : — still, whatever the difference may 
be in the ultimate analysis, undeniably his prose is nearor the 
present style of English than any prose of anterior date. His 
style has a flt)W and elevation not to be found in any prose work 
before his time. On that ground, although he is " a warbler of 
poetic prose," his literary fame resting chiefly on a romance, it is 
desirable to analyse his style simply as a prose style at some length. 
As the "Hero of Zut[)hen," Sidney is one of the most popular 
characters in English history; and in his own day, at a very early 
age, was celebrated all over Europe for his discretion, courage, and 
accom[)lishments. It is said that he was mooted as a candidate 
for the throne of Poland, and that Elizabeth put her veto on the 
rising negotiation, because she could not part with " the jewel of 
her time." He was born at Penshurst in Kent; son of Sir Henry 
Sidney — a knight who became a favourite with Elizabeth, and was 
famed as an administrator of Ireland ; and nephew to the Earl of 
Leicester. He was educated at Shrewsbury, and at Christ Church, 
Oxford. In 1572, at the age of seventeen, he set out with three 
years' leave of absence to travel on the Continent ; was in Paris 
during the massacre of St Bartholomew, and went thence to 
Frankfort, Vienna, and the chief cities of Italy. During these 



sin nilLIP SIDNEY. 201 

travels, unlike most travellers of his rank, he associated with 
sclmlars and statL'smen, niuking an earnest study of European 
politics. Introduced at Court in 1575, his mixed courtesy and 
gravity at once made him a favourite. In 1577, at the :i<^e of 
twenty-two, leing sent as ambassador in great state to congratu- 
late the new Emperor of (^erniany, and discover ;is far as possible 
his tendencies, he met William the Silent of Orange, who pro- 
nounced him one of the ripest statesmen in Europe. During the 
eight following years, he had no public employ uient, and lived 
chiefly at Court. In 1578 he wrote his masque 'The Lady of 
the May,' performed at ElizaVieth's reception by his uncle the 
Earl of Leice.>tcr. Probably about the same time he began his 
sonnets to ' Stella,' the daughter of the Earl of Essex, afterwards 
married to Lord Rich. In the same year he had Spenser living 
with him at Penshurst. In 1580 he wrote the 'Arcatlia,' dedi- 
cated to his celebrated sister, the Countess of Pembroke. In 
the following year he is supposed to have written the ' Apologie 
for Portrie.' After this he became too much engaged in politics 
to have time for literature. As a statesman, he devoted himself 
to the policy of humbling the power of Spain. He had boldly 
written to Elizabeth in 1580, dissuading her from the marriage 
with Anjou, and now he was eager that the Queen slioul 1 take 
active part with the Continental Protestants. This not being done, 
he impatiently planned with Drake a secret exjiedition to strike at 
the Spani.sh colonies in America, but was interdicted just at 
starting. At last Elizabeth resolved to stir, and in the fall of 
1585 sent him to the Netherlands as Governor of Flushing along 
with an army under Leicester. Commencing operations in spring, 
Sidney showed great enterprise and skill, but was mortally wounded 
in a rencounter at Zutphen, and died Oct. 17, 1586. The touch- 
ing incident that has endeared his memory, and made him known 
to every schoolboy, occurred as he rode wounded from the battle. 

'i'hough he was well known as a writer, and widely esteemed as 
a patron of literary men during his life, none of his woiks were 
])ublished till after his death. The ' Arcadia ' was first printed 
in 1590, the 'Apologia for Poetrie* in 1595. 

In personal ap[tearance Sidney was tall and handsome, with 
clear complexion, and hair of a dark amber colour. Py Spenser's 
testimony he excelled in athletic sports — "in wrestling idmble, 
anil in running swift; in shooting steady, and in swimming strong; 
well made to strike, to throw, to leap, to lift." He was of such 
prowess in the tournament, that on the occasion of a great festival 
he was selected as one of four champions to keep the lists in hon- 
our of England against all comers. 

It is not often that we find in union with such physical prowess 
any remarkable powers of mind. In Elizabeth's Court there were 



20--! FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

many able men both physically and mentally, but none of those 
that were a match for Sidney in the tournament could have 
written the 'Arcadia' or the 'Apology for Poetry.' Even in his 
healthy active boyhood Sidney was remarkably stulious; "his 
talk," says his schoolfellow Fulke Greville, " ever of knowledge, 
and his very play tending to enrich the mind." When he grew to 
maidiood, his sagacity in practical affairs soon won him golden 
ojiinions from more than one veteran statesman. If we look to 
his writings, we find abundant proofs of intellectual vigour. His 
diction is copious and felicitous, unmistakably significant of mental 
quickness and force. In his ' Arcadia ' we are constantly struck 
with the extreme volatility and subtlety of his fancy. In the 
Apology, along with a similar sprightliness, we meet with pas- 
sages suggestive of miore solid power. In defending poetry against 
the Puritans, it shows considerable rhetorical perspicacity to 
claim the Psalms of David as " divine poems." And there is no 
small discernment in his maintaining that a poem might be writ- 
ten in prose ; that " verse is but an ornament and no cause to 
poetry." Taken all in all, his works bear evidence of versatile, 
fresh, and vigorous intellect, and support what is recorded of his 
adroit courtesy and sagacious observation of affairs. 

As regards his emotional character, were we to judge solely from 
his writings, we should take him to have been a man of ebullient 
spirits, tempered by extraordinary sweetness and warmth of dis- 
position. This is the impression left by the soft exuberant humour 
of the Apology, and its strong expressions of delight in the 
works of the poet. He seems to have been a pleasant companion, 
although not of the rollicking, pleasure-loving tem{>er that per- 
petually craves for society. Gay with the gay among his boon 
companions, he could also be serious with the serious. He loved 
to exchange thoughts in private colloquy with such men as Languet 
and Spenser. At times he courted solitude, and would even seem 
to have undergone fits of melancholy and despondency, as when, 
before leaving England for the last time, he expressed a presenti- 
ment that he should never return. To the creations of art he 
turned with ever fresh delight. He was not an optimist ; he did 
not find enduring satisfaction, abundant means of enjoyment, in 
the actual world ; he took refuge from facts in the regions of 
imagination — '' Nature's world," he said, " is brazen, the poet's 
only golden." The ruling emotion in his creative efforts, as we 
shall see when we. come to analyse the qualities of his style, is 
tenderness — not the wild passionate tenderness of the Celtic nature, 
but a soft and courtly phase of the emotion. His imagination did 
not dwell sadly upon the sorrowful side of life, but joyfully spent 
itself in playful humour, in graceful fancies, in pictures of beautiful 
women and beautiful scenery, and in deeds of romantic devotion. 



SIR rillLIP SIDNEY. 203 

The 'Arcadia' gives little evidence of delii^lit in tlie mere excite- 
ment of power. It contains great variety of incidents and char- 
acters ; but everything is transHgured by the iill-j)ervading sweet- 
ness and wanntii — everything is seen through this atmosphere. 
His heroes — young men of irresistible prowess — are beautiful as 
gods. In recounting their most valiant achievements, he never 
suffers us to forget that they are in love ; either they are fighting 
to rescue their fair ladies, or the ladies are listening with admira- 
tion to the story of their brave adventures. If he enters with 
spirit into the description of a storm, a battle, a tournament, a 
duel, a popular tumult, or the speeches at a trial, not only does 
he mingle i)retty fancies with his description or narrative, but he 
seldom keeps long out of view the tender interests at stake. 

Men so lavishly endowed otherwise as Sidney, with such capaci- 
ties and self-contained means of enjoyment, are often indifferent 
to the aims of ambition, and even rash and imitrudently generous. 
A less bountiful natural outfit is more serviceable for rising and 
remaining hii;h in the world. He did not jiush for favour and 
olHce at Court : a slight rebuff drove him to the country ; and he 
might have spent his life in retirement had not his foreign friend 
Languet impressed him with the gravity of tlie political situation 
in Europe, and urged him to take a part. Once resolved upon a 
course of action, he moved with fearlessness and vigour. Few 
men would have ventured on his bold remonstrance to Elizaljeth 
against the French marriage. Naturally sweet-tempered, he was 
haughty and imperious when ])rovoked, and ready to put out his 
hand to execute his will : witness his giving the lie to the Earl of 
Oxford, his challenge to the unknown asperser of his uncle Leices- 
ter, and his threatening to " thrust his dagger into " poor secretary 
Molyneux, whom he suspected of tampering with his letters. He 
owed his death to an impulse of romantic generosity. The Lord 
Marshal happening to enter the field of Zutphen without greaves, 
Sidney cast off" Ids also, to put his life in the same peril, and so 
exposed himself to the fatal shot. 

The opinions of the Apology call for some notice. It is a light 
humorous production, with here and there flashes of lofty beauty; 
but beneath all this, tliere is a foundation of serious doctrine. Tlie 
author is full of humour and eloquence in behalf of the delights of 
poitry, but he shows also a serious interest in the cause, a genuine 
zeal to convince and convert. Very much contrary to the modern 
theory that makes the ''interpretation of nature " the poet's chief 
end, is the saying above cjuotod, that "nature's Avorld is brazen, 
the poet's only goUlen." " Nature never set forth the earth in 
so rich tapestry as divers poets have done, neither with pleasant 
rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else 



204 FKO.M 1580 TO IGIO. 

may make the too much loved earth more lovely." Tie eloquently 
defends the usefuhiess of poetry : it furnishes speaking pictures of 
virtue more perfect than even history can show ; to uiaJKe vice 
attractive is the abuse and not the use of poetry. To those that 
accuse poets of lying, he ingeniously answers that they affirm 
nothing as true, and therefore cannot lie. 

His criticisms of existing English poetry show a fine taste. He 
objects to outrageous infraction of the unities (see p. 212); to 
violent mixture of serious and comic — "your mongrel tragi- 
comedy;" — and to making ridicule of human weakness, of "an 
extreme show of doltishness," or of " strangers because they speak 
not English as we do." He objects also to Lyly's surfeit of simil- 
itudes, accusing him of " rifiing u]) all Herbarists, all stories of 
Beasts, Fowls, and Fishes," which, he says, is "an absurd surfeit 
to the ears," "rather overswaying the memory than any whit 
informing the judgment." 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocahulary. — "It is marvellous," says Mr William Stigant, 
author of an essay ou Sidney in the 'Cambridge Essays' for 1S58, 
"with what a delicate tact he had divmed the capacity of the 
English language for prose composition, and how few obsolete 
words he has made use of, writing in advance of the great Eliza- 
bethan epoch. He reads indeed more modern than any author of 
that century." Sidney escapes free from Thomas Wilson's cen- 
sure ; his terms are neither French, nor Italianate, nor inkhorn 
words of Latin origin. The idiom, too, is purely English : he 
differs but seldom from modern idiom, and then from using Eng- 
lish idioms that have become obsolete, not from any affectation of 
foreign syntax. 

As a master of the living English of his time, he must rank 
among the hiL;hest. Even to modern readers his diction is rich 
and varied ; the fitting word is chosen with an ap})areiit ease that 
implies a great power over the language. 

Senfences. — Nathan Drake's criticisms of Sidney's style as 
"nerveless and incompact," can apply only to the sentences. The 
component clauses are framed with great versatility, sometimes 
with a rich long-drawn melody, sometimes with pointed neatness, 
sometimes with proverbial conciseness. In putting the clauses 
together, he is certainly careless. He does not, like Jeremy Taylor, 
pour them out breathlessly without any syntax whatever, but he 
rambles on without much regard to unity or to the symmetrical 
distribution of his matter. In our various quotaticms, the reader 
will see his ordinary sentences ; the following is a specimen of his 
worst form : — 



SIR nilLIP SIDNEY. 205 

" The country Arrndia among all the provinces of Orcpoe, h;itli ever been 
!had in siiifjnlar rcy)utati(pn ; |iaitly fur llie swertncss nf tlie air, and otlier 
natural benefits, but iirinri|vally ior the well-tempered mimiK of the people, 
who (finding tliat the sliiinni,' lille of ploiy, so niucli aflVcied by other 
liations, dotii indeed Indp little to the happiness of life) are the only people, 
(I'hich, as by their justice and providence ;^ive neither eanse nor hope to 
their neiglibours to iinnoy ; so are they not stirred with I'alse praise to trouble 
others' ([uiet, tliinking it a small reward for the wastini; of their own lives 
ill ravening, that their posterity should long after say, ihey had done so." 

Paragraphs. — Our author's paragrajih nrrangenient is very irre- 
gular, though not worse than the average of his time. Someiiines, 
when he ought to begin a new paragraph, he clce>5 not even begin 
a new sentence. The following passage is an example of bis want 
ol strict method : — 

" Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his 
word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterleitiiig, or figuring 
forth : to speak metaplioricall}', a speaking picture: with tliis end, to leach 
and delight ; of this iiave been three several kinds. The chief, both in 
antifiuity and excellency, were they that did i'nitate the inconceivable excel- 
lencies of Go<i. Sui'h weie David in his I'salms ; Sidi inon in his Song of 
8oiigs, in his Ec( lesiastes, iind I'roveibs ; Moses atid Deborah in their 
liymns, and the writer of Job ; which, beside other, the learned Emanuel 
Trernilius and Franciscus Junius do entitle the jioetical part of the Scripture. 
Against titese none will speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy 
reverence. 

" In this kind, though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Ari]diion, 
Homer in his hymns, and many other, both Greeks and Koiuiins ; and this 
Poesv must be used, by whosoever will follow S. James bis counsel, in sing- 
ing Psalms when they are mcriy ; and I know is used with the fruit of com- 
fort by some, when in sorrowful p)angs of their death- bringing sins, they 
find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness. 

"The second kind is of them that deal with matters philosophical; either 
moral, as, &c. : . . . which who mislike, the fault is in their judg- 
ments quite out of taste, and not in the swtet fond of sweetly uttered know- 
ledge. Hut because this second soit is wrapjied within the fold of the pro- 
jiosed subject, and takes not the course of his own invent ion, whether they 
be properly Poets or no, let Grammarians dispute : and go to the third, 
indeed right Poets, of whom," &c. 

Minor niceties, of course, we need not look for. It is, however, 
interesting to meet tlie folhiwing example of a set comparison, 
where the order of tlie balance is better kept than in some of the 
celeltrated later efforts after the same plan. He is describing 
" the two daughters of King Easilius, so beyond measuie excellent 
in all the gifts allotted to reasonable creatures, that we may think 
they were born to show that nature is no step-mother to that sex, 
how much soever some men (sharp-witted only in evil-speakiug) 
have sought to disgrace them : " — 

" The elder is named Pamela : by many men not deemed inferior to her 

sister : for my part, when 1 markeii them both, methouglit there was \if at 



206 FKOM 1580 TO 1610. 

least such perfections may receive the name of more) more sweetness in 
Philoclea, but more mnjestyin Pamela. Methought love played in Philoclea]s 
eyes, and threarened in Pamela's: niethoaght Philoclea s heauty only per'- 
suaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield. Pamela's beauty use((i 
violence, and such violence as no heart could resist. And it seems tha.t 
such proportion is between their minds ; Philoclea so bashlnl, as if ht,.^ 
excellencies had stolen into her before she was aware ; so humble that s)ie 
will put all pride out of countenance ; in sura, such proceeding as will s^.ir 
hope, b it teach hope good manners. Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids 
not priile with not knowing her excellencies, but by making thit one of 1 er 
excellencies to be void of pride ; her mother's wisdom, greatness, nobility, 
but (if 1 guess aright) knit with a more constant temper." 

Figures. — Sidney is wholly free from what he condemns in Lyly 
— excess of similes and parallels. He makes comparatively f'^w 
formal similitudes. Some of those that he does make are singularly 
apt. The saying that Chevy Chase " moved him like the sound 
of a trurn])et," is as familiar as any of Shakspeare's. Another 
similitude borrowed or stolen from him is scarcely less famous. A 
combat between two of his heroes he describes as being like a 
battle between a Spanish galleon and an English man of- war. The 
figure is well known as applied by Fuller to Ben Jouson and 
Shakspeare. 

While comparatively free from gaudy and fantastic embellish- 
menis, one of the worst vices of the Elizabethan style, he is not a 
])lain writer. He shows that he was bred in the same school of 
prose as the Eupliuist Lyly. His peculiar affectation consists in 
an excessive use of fanciful personifications and fanciful antitheses; 
fancies usually sweet and graceful, and palling only from overnuich 
repetition. We touched on this in the brief account of his char- 
acter ; we shall find abundant examples in the quotations that 
follow. When the subject-matter is beautiful and pleasing, these 
graceful fancies are an additional charm ; Avhen the subject is 
grave or lofty, they are inharmonious and out of place. 

Perhaps the most pleasing use of his personifications is in the 
descri|ition of nature. He often expresses the time of the day 
euphemistically. For exam|)le: " About the time that the candles 
began to inherit tlie sun's office;" "seeing the day begin to dis- 
close her comfortable beauties;" "as soon as the morning had 
took a full possession of the element ;" and suchlike. In describ- 
ing landscape he follows no descriptive method ; merely over- 
laying the various particulars of a scene with his " flowers of 
]ioetry," "sugired" epithets and pleasing figurative conceits. 
Thus he describes how Musidorus and Clitophon came to " a 
pleasant valley, on either side of which high hills lifted up their 
beetle brows, as if they would overlook the pleasantness of the under 
prospect^ And how " they laid them down hard by the murmur- 
ing music of certain waters, which spouted out of the side of the 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 207 

hills, and in the bottom of the valley made of many springs a 
pretty brook, like a commonweattli of many families.'^ 

The following longer passage is really an example of his 
favourite figures, rather than an illustration of any descriptive 
art : — 

" It was indeed a place of delight ; for through the midst of it there ran 
a swi'et brook, which did both liold the eye oi)en witli her azure streams, 
and yet seek to close tiie eye with the purling noise it made ujion tlie pebble 
stones it rau over : the Held itself being set in some ])laces with roses, and 
in all the rest constantly jjreserving a flourishing green : the roses added 
such a ruddy show unto it, as tliough the field were bashful at its own 
beauty : about it, as if it had been to enclose a theatre, grew such sort of 
trees, as either excellency of fruit, stateliness of growth, continual green- 
ness, or poetical fancies, have made at any time famous. In most pait of 
which there had been framed by art such pleasant arbours, tliat, one answer- 
ing another, they became a giliery aloft from tree to tree almost round 
about, which below gave a [lerfect shadow ; a pleasant refuge then from the 
choleric look of Phoebus." 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity and Clearness. — Sidney's style, as we have said, is free 
alike from the " inkhorn " technical words of the learned pedant, 
and from the French and "Italianate" words of the travelled man 
of fashion. His meaning is also less cumbered and interrupted 
with superfluous quotations than was common at the time. 

The order of topics in the Apology shows little sense of the 
value of good arrangement. There is a kind of rongh method on 
the large scale. He first sets out the true nature and value of 
poetry, then answers objections, and concludes with a criticism of 
existing poetry. But within these divisions he jumps from one 
thing to another without restraint. 

Precision in the use of words was little attended to till much 
later in the history of our language. 

Strenf/th. — The ' Arcadia ' being a chivalrous romance, is an 
excellent Held for a powerful style. In the imagination of thrill- 
ing adventures, reckless braving of danger, exploits of super- 
human heroism, onr author shows a keen enjoyment of vigorous 
action. Musidorus and Pyrocles perform the most wonderfid 
achievements — leading armies, quelling tumults, fighting single 
comlxats, passing from chains and imprisonment to victorious com- 
mand, — achievements well fitted to exercise the highest powers of 
vigorous narrative and description. 

We have seen (p. 202) how this stirring and imposing activity 
is qualified and softened down. Partly there is a large admixture 
of gentler elements in the ])lot, the exploits being for the most 
part eitlier done at the instigation of love, or recited to gratify the 
curiosity of fair hearers. Put what we are concerned with here is 



208 FROM 15S0 TO lOlO- 

not so much the subject-matter as the manner of presentation. Aa 
already noted incidentally, Sidney's style is deliberately the reverse 
of exciting or elevating. Whether he is reciting grim deeds of 
battle, or describing the most terrific phenomena of nature, he 
tempers the account with soft and humorous fancies. He wrote 
the 'Arcadia' more to amuse himself and his sister than to set 
forth thrilling and heroic incidents in their appropriate language. 
The following are two examples of his treatment of exciting 
themes. The manner as a whole would not be tolerated in the 
present age, and even as a relic of antiquity will hardly be en- 
joyed if read as a serious effort. We must keep in min I that the 
youthful knight wrote for the entertainment of his sister and her 
lady friends ; and that, with all his softness and courtesy, he took 
pleasure in occasionally shocking his gentle readers with somewhat 
grim humour : — 

" But by this time there had been a furious meeting of either side : where 
after the terrible salutation of warlike noise, the shaking of hands was with 
sharp weapons ; some lances, according to the metal they met and skill of 
tlie guider, did stain themselves in blood ; some Hew up in pieces, as if they 
would threaten heaven because they failed on earth. But their office was 
quickly inherited, either by (tlie ])rince of weapons) the sword, or by some 
heavy mace, or biting axe ; which hunting still the weakest chace, sought 
ever to light there where smallest resistance might worse prevent mischief. 
The clashing of nrmour, and crushing of staves, the jostling of bodies, the 
resounding of blows, was the first part of that ill-agretiiig musick, which was 
beautified with the grisliness of wounds, the rising of dust, tlie iiideous falls 
and the groans of tiie dying. The very horses angry in their master's anger, 
with love and obedience, brought forth the effects of hate and resistance, and 
with minds of servitude did as if they atfected glory. Some lay dead under 
their dead masters, whom unkniglitly wounds had unjustly [>unished lor a 
faithful duty. Some lay upon their lords by like accident, and in denth had 
the honour to be borne by them, whom in life they had borne. Some hav- 
ing lost their. commanding burthens, ran scattered about the field, abashed 
with the madness of mankind. The earth itself (wont to be a burial of men) 
was now, as it were, buried witli men : so was the fice thereof hidden with 
dead bodies, to whom death had come masked in divers manners. In one 
place lay disinheritetl heads dispossessed of their natural seignories ; in 
another, whole bodies to see to, but that their hearts wont to be bound all 
over so close, were now, with deadly violence, opened : in others, fouler 
deaths had uglily displayed their trailing guts. There lay arms, whose 
fingers yet moved, as if they would feel for him that made them feel; and 
legs which, contrary to common reason, by being discharged of their burthen, 
were grown heavier. But no sword payed so large a tribute of souls to the 
eternal kingdom as that of Am/ihialics ; who, like a tiger from whom a com- 
pany of wolves did seek to ravish a new-gotten prey, so he (remembering 
they came to take away Philoclea) did labour to make valour, strength, 
choler, and hatred to answer the projiortion of his love, which was infinite." 

" But by that the next morning began a little to make a gilded show of a 
good meaning, there arose even with the sun, avail of dark clouds before his 
face, which shoitly, like ink poured into water, had blacked over all the face 



sill PHILIP SIDNEY. 209 

of lieavrn ; preparing as it were a niournfnl stajje for a tragedy to he played 
on. F'or forlliwitli tlie winds began to speiik louder, anil as in a tnniultuons 
kingdom, to think lliemsfives fittest iustninients of coinniandMieiit ; and 
blowing whole storms of hail and rain uyou them, thi-v were so'iner m 
danger tlian they could alinost hctliink themselves of change. For thei' the 
traitorous sea began to swell in pride against the afilieted navy, under \vhi(di, 
wliile the heaven fivoured them, it had lain so calmly, making mountains 
of itself, over whi(di the tossed and totirring slii|i should climb, to be 
straight carried down again to a pit of ]:i'lli>h darkness ; witli such cruel 
blows against the sides of the ship that, which way soevei- it went, was still 
in his nuilice that there was left neither power to stay, nor way to esc:i]ie. 
. . But in the ship wherein the princes were, now left as murh alone 
as proud lords be when fortuue fiils tlnm, though they employed all in- 
dustry to save themselves, yet what they did was latiier for (luty to nature 
than hope to escape so ugly a darkness as if it would ]irevent the night's 
coming, usurped the day's right: which accompanied sometimes with 
thunders, always with horrible noises of the chasing winds, made the 
masters and pilots so astonished that they knew not how to direct ; and if 
they knew tliey could scarcely, v/hen they directed, hear their own whistle. 
For the sea strove with the winds which should he louder, and the shrouds 
of the ship, with a ghastiul noise to them 'hat were in it, witnessed, that 
their ruin was the wager of the other's contention, and the heaven roaring 
out thunder the more amazed them as having those ]iowers for enemies. 
Tliere was to be seen the divers manner of mimls in distress ; .some sat upon 
the top of the poop weeping and wailing, till the sea swallowed them ; some 
one more able to abide death than the fear of death, cut his own tin oat to 
juevent drowning ; some prayed ; and there wanted not of them which 
cursed, as if the heavens could not be more angry than they were." 

Pathos. — In the ' Arcadia ' there are very few ]'assages to grntify 
the ta.ste for the pathos of tender regret. Pitiable incidents occur 
very often, but they serve to keep alive the stir of the plot, and dc 
not invite us to shut the book and indulge in melancholy tender- 
ness. The misery of the suffereis is too intense to be i)athetic. 
They sufi'er from the pangs of despised love, from the agony of 
bereavement, from the lage of remorse ; they are not resigned to 
their fate. 

The following are two exceptions to the above general .statement 
— two pitiful incidents that have no intiuence on the plot, and are 
good subjects for ])atlietic treatment. One is the death of y<iung 
Agenor, related with genuine pathos. Had the death of the gay 
youth been wilful, it would have moved us with horror ; being an 
accident, it touches us with sorrow as for an unavoidable and 
irremediable misfortune : — 

" His name was Agenor, of all that army the most beautiful ; who h iving 
ridden in sportful conversation aujong the foremost, all armed, saving that 
his beaver was up, to have his breath at more Ireedom, seeing Jtnijihialus 
come a pretty way before his company, neither staying the commandment 
of his captain, nor reckoning whether his face were armed or no, >et spurs 
to his hois-, !ind with yonthlul bravery casting his stall' about Ins head, put 
it then in his rest, as caretul of comely cairying it as if the mark had been 
but a ring and the lookeis-ou ladies. But At i (phial us' s lance was already 

O 



210 FROM 1580 TO IGIO. 

come to the last of his descending line, and began to make tliS full point of 
death against the ln'iid of this young gentleman ; when Arnphialus, per- 
ceiving his youth and lieauty, compassion so related the edge of choler that 
he spared tliat fair nakedness, and let his staff fall to Agenor's vampalt : so 
as hoth with l)rave breaking should hurtlessly liave performed that match, 
but tiiat the pitiless lance oi' Ainphialus (angry with lieing broken) with an 
unlucky countcrbulf, full of unsparing siilinters, lighted upon that face, far 
fitter for the combats of Venus , giving not only a sudden but a foul death, 
leaving scarcely any tokens of his former lieaiity ; but his hands abandoning 
the reins and his thighs the saddle, he fell si^leward from the horse." 

The other is the death of Parthenia — a lady who, when her 
husband was slain, put on armour, challenged his victor, and 
perished in the fight. Sidney overlays this painful subject with 
his favourite figures. It is difficult to feel in what mood such an 
incident could appear a suitable ground for such embroidery : — 

" But the head-piece was no sooner off, but that there fell about the 
shoulders of the overcome kniglit the treasure of fair golden hair, which 
with the face (soon known by the badge of excellency) witnessed that it was 
I'arthcnia, the unfortunately virtuous wife of Argalus ; her beauty then, 
even in despite of the passed sorrow, or coming death, assuring all beholders 
that it was nuthing short of perfection. For her exceeding fair eyes, hav- 
ing with continual weeping gotten a little redness about them, her round 
sweetly-swelling lips a little trembling, as though they kissed their neigh- 
bour deatli ; in her cheeks the whiteness strivi- g by little and little to get 
upon the rosiness of them ; her neck, a neck indeed of alabaster, displaying 
the wouml, whi(di with most dainty blood laboured to drown his own beau- 
ties ; so as here was a river of jiurest red, there an island of p.erfectest white, 
each giving lustre to the oilier, with tlie sweet countenance, God knows, 
full of an uuiitfecteil languishing : though these things to a grossly conceiv- 
ing sense might seem disgiaces, yet indeed were they bitt ajiparell ing beauty 
in a new fashion, which all looked ujion through the spectacles of ]uty, did 
even inci-ease the lines of her natui-al f:drncss ; so as Amphitilus was aston- 
ished with grief, comyiassiiui, and shame, detesting his fortune that made 
him unfortunate in victory." 

Sidney's true ])athos lies chiefly in pictures of beauty and 
devotedness. With such subjects his fancies are more in keep- 
ing. We have seen (p. 206) with what sweetness he can describe 
natural scenery. In his descriptions of female beauty, he is some- 
times a little more sensuous than the taste of onr period thinks 
becoming. But there is much of his description that none need 
hesitate to read. The following hyperbolical passage contains 
what is possibly the original of one of Shakspeare's sweetest 
fancies : — 

" Her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes 
creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of 
summer ; and yet is nothing compared to the honey-flowing speech that 
breath doth carry ; no more all that our eyes can see of her (though when 
they have seen her, wliat else they shall ever see is but dry stubble after 
clover-grnss) is to be matched with the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid up 
delightfullv in that bcst-buildcd fold." 



SIR PHILIP SIHNEY. 21 1 

His personifications appear to advantage in such passages as 
tliis : — 

" And as the ladies plaj-ed there in the water, sometimes striking it '.vith 
their hatuis, ihe water (making lines on his face) seemed to smile at siieh 
beating, and, with twenty buliMes, not to be content to have the iiiciure of 
their lace in large ujion him, but he would in each of those bubbles set forth 
the miniature of them." 

The ' Arcadia ' is brimful of chivalrous devotion. Every per- 
sonage is one of a ]iair of lovers — Fyrocles and Philoclea, Musi- 
dorus and Pamela, Helen and Aniphialus, Am[thialus and Pamela, 
Argalus and Parthenia, Phalantus and Artesia, itc. The friend- 
ship of Pyrocles and ]\lusidorus is like the frien (ship of Pylades 
and Orestes. When the one is supposed to be drowned, the other 
is restrained only by force from casting himself into the sea. 
When the one is seized and threatened with death, the other insists 
upon taking his place. It would indeed be difficult to make any 
alteration in the plot that should bring out more numerous or 
more striking acts of devotedness. 

lluvionr. — Sidney's humour is hearty, joyous — bordering some- 
times upon farce, but usually retined by the wit of the exprc^sinn. 
In the ' Arcadia ' he has one or two humorous characters, notably 
Dametas and Mopsa ; ^ and describes some exipiisitely lu licrous 
scenes, such as the light between the two cowards Dametas and 
Clinias, and Mopsa in the wishing-tree. The following passage, 
occurring in the description of a riot, is very farcical, without 
much wit to give it rehnemeut : — 

'• Yet among the rebels there was a dapper fellow, a tailor bj' occupation, 
who fetching his courage oidy from th'ir going back, began to bow his knees, 
and very fencer-like to draw near lo Zelniane. But as he came within her 
distance, turning ids swoid veiy nicely about his crown, Hasilius struck olf 
his nose. He (being suitor to a seamstress's daughter, and therefore not 
a little grieved for such a disgrace) he stooped down, because he had heard 
that if it were fresh put to, it wouhl cleave on again. l>ut as his haml was 
on the ground to bring his nose to his head, Zelniane with a blow sent hia 
head to his nose." 

There is a boyish freshness and simplicity about the humour 
of the Apology. In the beginning, by way of anticijiating the 
criticism thai he is a prejudiced enthusiast in favour of poetry he 
tells a humorous story to bring out that "self-love is better than 
any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves are 
parties." He tells us how he and a friend took lessons of a riding- 
master in Vienna, and that this gentleman, " according to the 
fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the demonstra- 
tion of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with the con- 
templations therein, which he thought most precious." He then 

1 Mopsa is bon'owed by Shakspeare. 



212 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

recounts some of Pugliano's bravuras about the value of hnrseiiian- 
ship — "skill of government was but a pedanteria in comparison" 
— and repeats some of his eloquent praises of the horse : — 

" The only serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beauty, 
faitlifuhiess, eouiagi', ami such more, that if 1 had not been a piece of a 
logiciiii before I came to hun, / think he would have persuaded me to liave 
wished mtjaclf a home." 

His argument for the unities is enlivened by a similar spirit of 
boisterous mockery: — 

" For vvliere the stage shonhl always represi'itt but one place, and the 
uttermost time presupposed in it slioultl be, both by Aristotle's precept and 
common reason, but one (iay : there is both many days and many ])laces, 
inaititicially imagined. But if it be so in Gorbodue, bow much more in all 
the rest ? Where you shall huve Asia of the one side, and Afric oC the other, 
and so many otlier under-kingdoms that the Player, when he cometh in, 
must ever begin with telling where he is : or else the tale will not be con- 
ceived. Now ye shall have three huHes wnlk to gather flowers, and then we 
must believe the stage to be a (iarden. By-aiid-liy we hear news of shipwreck 
iu the same place, and then we are to blame if we accej)t it not for a Ruck. 

" Upon tlie back of tliat. comes out a hideous monster with fire and 
smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it lor a Cave. 
While in the meantime, two armies fly in, represented witii four swords and 
bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field? 
Now, of time they are nnicli more liberal, for ordinary it is that two princes 
fall in love. After many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a fair 
boy, he is lost, groweth a man, falls in love, and is ready to get another 
child, and all this in two hours space : which how absurd it is in sense," &c. 

This must have been very amusing r'dicule ^ of the stage as it 
existed in Sidney's time, though from the change of circumstances 
it has not the same eflect for us. The mock-heroic close of the 
Apology has not yet lost its force, though even it is perhaps too 
exuberant for modern taste : — 

" Thus doing, your name shall flourish in the Printer's shops ; tlius doing, 
you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface ; tluis doing, you shall be most 
fair, most rich, most wise, most all, —you shall dwell upon superlatives. . . , 
But if (fie of such a But) you be borne so near tlie dull-making Cataphract 
of Nilus that you cannot hear the Planet-like Music of Poetry, if you have 
so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lilt itself up to look to the sky of 
Poetry; or rather, by a certain rustical disdain will become such a Mome, 
as to be a Momus of Poetry : then, though I will not wish unto you the 
Ass's ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a l^oet's veises (as Bubonax was) to 
hang liimseif, nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland ; 
yet thus much curse I niu^t send you, in the behalf of all Poets, that while 
yon live, you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a Sonnet ; 
and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an Epitaph." 

Melody. Harmony. — We have already remarked {Sentences, p. 
204) that Sidney is versatile in the movement of his language. 

1 It may have suggested the incomparable fun of the play before Thesews in 
'Midsummer Night's Dream.' 



RICHARD HOOKER. 213 

Every reader must notice how readily lie adapts his rhythm to 
pointed wit or flowing declamation. Few of our writers surpass 
him in soaring and bringing out a full melodious cadence. The 
last-quoted sentence is as measured and stately in its movement as 
could well be found. In some of the tender passages, the music of 
the language is such as can hardly be imitated under present laws 
of taste as regards epithets. The following is an instance — " the 
nightingales one with the other striving which could in most dainty 
variitij recount their wrong-caused sorrow.'^ 

It is needless to review Sidney's style at length under the kinds 
of composition. We have seen that he has no descriptive method 
— that the only merit of his description lies in the graces of his 
style. As a Narrator, he relates events with clearness ; but the 
ditferent lines of events are so numerous and interwoven that it is 
ditttcult to avoid getting CDufnsed among them. To those that do 
not enjoy the beauties of his hinguage, the numerous speeches and 
meditations must appear a tedious impediment to the action. As 
regards Exposition, all has been said under the intellectual quali- 
ties. In the way of Persxiasion, his Apology would tell partly by 
its clear and ingenious arguments, ])artly by its winning playful- 
ness of manner and impetuous exuberance of spirits. 

RICHARD HOOKER, 15G3-1600. 

The following estimate of Hooker by the author of the * Intro- 
duction to the Literature of Europe,' is often quoted : " So stately 
" and graceful is the march of his periods, so various the fall of his 
" musical cadences upon the ear, so rich in images, so condensed in 
" sentences, so grave and noble his diction, so little is there of vul- 
" garity in his lacy idiom, of pedantry in liis learned phrase, that 
" 1 know not whether any later writer has more admirably dis- 
"l)layed the cajiacities of our language, or produced jiassages more 
" worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity." 
Though this eloquent panegyric is an extreme exaggeration, and 
could never have been written by any person keeping his eye on 
the facts, the ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' does undoubtedly, as is often 
said, " mark an era in English prose." In some respects superior, 
in some inferior to Sidney's, Hooker's style is the first specimen of 
good prnse applied to the weightier purposes of literature. 

According to Izaak Walton, in one of his well-known "Lives," 
Hooker was born at Heavitree, in or near Exeter. His parents 
were ])oor, but of respectable family; his uncle John was Chamber- 
lain of Exeter. His father designed to ap|irentice him to a trade; 
but his schoolmaster, seeing the boy's abilities, was solicitous that 
lie should get learning, and spoke to the chamberlain uncle. The 
uncle spoke to Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, who examined the young 



214 FKOM 1580 TO 1610. 

prodigy, found him all that the good schoolmaster represented, gave 
him a pension, and in 1567 got him admitted as a Clerk (sizar, ser- 
vitor, or bursar) to Corpus Christi, Oxford. In 157 1 his patron 
died, and Hooker was greatly dejected, and even in tears, about his 
future subsistence. From this he was relieved by the President of 
the College, who promised to be his friend ; and some nine months 
after, through the recommendation of his late patron, he got as a 
pupil Edwin, sou of Bishop Sandys, whose influence was afterwards 
of great service to him. For some ten years after this, he remained 
at Oxford, being admitted Fellow of his College in 1577, appointed 
to read Hebrew lectures in 1579, and in the same year tempo- 
rarily expelled along with Reynolds for some reason now unknown. 
During this time he was an industrious reader, " enriching," says 
Walton, " his quiet and capacious soul with the precious learning 
of the [)hilosophers, casuists, and schoolmen ; and with them the 
foundation and reason of all laws, both sacred and civil ; and in- 
deed with such other learning as lay most remote from the track 
of common studies." In 1581, going to preach in London, he was 
led to make an unha])py marriage ; and about the same time set- 
tled with his wife in the living of Drayton Beauchamp, in Bucking- 
hamshire. In 1584-85, at the recoiimiendation of Sandys, whose 
son had seen and pitied the unhappiness of his old tutor's married 
life, Hooker was taken in hand by Archbishop Whitgift, and through 
his influence appointed Master of the Temple, in the Episcopal in- 
terest, and against a Presbyterian champi(m of the name of Travera.. 
Here began Hooker's labours in defence of Episcopacy. Travers, 
a bold preacher, with a popular manner, was Afternoon Lecturer 
in the Tem[»le, and maintained in the pulpit Presbyterian views of 
Church government. Hooker preaching in the forenoon, " the pul- 
pit," as Fuller said, "spake pure Canterbury in the morning, and 
Geneva in the afternoon." Travers, silenced by Whitgift on the 
ground of insuthcient ordination, continued the war in print; Hooker 
replied — but, unfit for the worry of controversy, begged from his 
patron some quiet post in the country, and in 1591 removed to the 
living of Boscombe, near Salisbury. Here in peace and privacy he 
meditated his ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' and published the first four 
Books in 1594. Translated in 1595 to the better living of Bishops- 
borne, near Canterbury, he sent a fifth Book to the press in 1597. 
He died in 1600, leaving three more Books of the Polity. The 
genuineness of these later books is doubted by Walton. On his 
and other evidence it is contended that the Sixth Book was muti- 
lated by the Presbyterian friends of Hooker's wife, and interjjo- 
lated with other matter taken from Hooker's papers ; also that the 
Seventh and the Eighth received a bias from Presbyterian hands. 
The evidence of fraud, though not improbable, is scarcely conclusive. 
The good faith of Hooker's Episcopal friends is shown by their pub- 



HICIIAKD HOOKER. 215 

lisliing wliat tbcy believed to be mutilated copies. The Sixth and 
.Eighth Books were first published in 165 i, the Seventh in 1662. 

From Walton we have a circumstantial description of Hooker as 
"a mail in poor clothes, his loins usually girt in a coarse gown or 
canonical coat ; of a mean stature, and stooping, and yet more 
lowly in the thought of his soul ; his body worn out, not with age, 
but study and holy mortifications; his face full of heat-pimples, 
begot by his inactivity and sedentary life." This account of his 
poor jihi/aique is borne out by other authorities. Dr Spenser says 
that his body was spent witli study, and Fuller that his voice was 
low and his stature little. To complete his bodily infirmities, 
"though not purblind, he was short or weak sighted." 

Impartial critics will not join the devoted admirers of Hooker in 
placing him among the greatest intellects of the nation. All liis 
life through he was a most industrious student, and his acquisi- 
tions as a scholar were undeniably profound. But his original 
force, whether as a thinker or as an expositor, was not great. As 
a champion of Episcopacy, he added little or nothing to the argu- 
ments of Jewel and Whitgift. Even his high flights of eloquence 
are not always original ; in many cases the ideas and the images are 
borrowed, the diction only being his own. In the application of 
his scholarship he is often very ingenious. His great fault, and it 
is fatal to the hiuh pretensions set up for him, is a want of coher- 
ence. He seems incapable of the effort of closely concatenating 
his thoughts. As he writes, a quotation occurs to him having 
some dim ap[)Iication to his present subject ; he puts down the 
quotation, l)ut leaves its bearing vague and indistinct. Sometliing 
like this is admitted, as it must be admitted, by his warmest eulo- 
gists. The exi)lanation probably lies in his constitutional languor. 
^Vhat his intellect might have done in a more vigorous constitution 
of body, can be only a matter of speculation. — One thing may l)e 
noted by way of parenthesis. If in controversy his constitutional 
feebleness interfered with the clear and telling application of his 
scholarship, in another respect it gave him a great advantage over 
his opponents. It left him free from the impulses of vehement 
attachment ; no impetuosity of conviction hurried him into un- 
reason ; he could always approach his subject with judicial cahn- 
ness, and take a circumsjtect survey of his ground. This dispas- 
sionate habit strikes us in every sentence ; it is Hooker's chief 
distinction amidst the fiery partisanshi[) of tlie time. 'Whether his 
judgment was sound or unsound, he was eminently free from vehe- 
ment prejudice, "or mist of passionate affection." 

Perhaps the chief cause of the over-estimation of Hooker's intel- 
lectual force is the extraordinary musical richness of his language. 
Most of us are more influenced by mere pomp of sound than we 



216 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

might be willing to allow ; and the melody of Hooker's periods is 
of the richest order. Like De Quincey, he was extremely suscep- 
tible to the "luxuries of the ear." This we can see from his own 
account of how music affected him : " We are at the hearing of 
some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness, of some more molli- 
fied and softened in mind ; one kind apter to stay and settle us, 
another to move and stir our affections ; there is that draweth to a 
marvellous grave and sober mediocrity ; there is also that carrieth, 
as it were, into ecstasies, filling the mind with a heavenly joy, and 
for the time in a manner severing it from the body." 

Though the Polity is professedly an argumentative work, and 
does contain some very solid dispassionate argument, his mind was 
perhaps more poetical than scientific. Special emotions do not 
assert themselves in marked individual luxuriance. The poverty 
of his nature in vital power was not favourable to the growth of 
emotion. We meet in the Polity neither rancorous invective nor 
passionate sentimental philanthropy, neither hero-worship nor exu- 
berant self-confident vivacity. The work is as utterly deficient in 
these more obtrusive forms of emotion as could well be conceived. 
The basis of the peculiar poetic vein of the work is his intense fear 
of every mode of confusion, strife, agitation; his passi(mate longing 
for quiet and tranquillity. He dilates with an a[)proach to rapture 
on " the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces, where nothing 
but light and blessed immortality, no shadow of matter for tears, 
discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon, 
but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even for ever and ever doth 
dwell." In the spirit of this craving for ])eace, and weary impa- 
tience of conflict and excitement, he dwells upon the prevalence 
of order throughout nature, upon the blessings of regularity and 
authority wherever they exist ; and passionately deprecates every 
appearance of insubordination. He is earnest with all dissenters 
from the established faith, worship, or government, to give up 
" private discretion," " private fancies," which can lead only to 
anarchy, disturbance, tumult. He would have them mature their 
views, submit these to constituted authority, and abide by the 
decision. Meantime let them obey in silence. 

What we know of his demeanour and active habits confirms the 
view of his character that one naturally forms from reading his 
works. " God and nature," says Izaak Walton, " blest him with 
So blessed a bashfulness, that as in his younger days his pupils 
might easily look him out of countenance ; so neither then, nor in 
his age, did he ever look any man in the face ; and was of so mild 
and humble a nature, that his poor parish clerk and he did never 
talk but with both their hats on, or both off, at the same time " 
All circumstances show Hooker to have been an unusually shy, 
sensitive, feeble little man, with very little activity, and very low 



RICHARD HOOKER. 217 

constitntiimal power. lie entered tlie controversies of liis time 
unwirtiiiirly ; and, after a short experience, begged for "peace and 
privacy." When forced to vindicate what lie had said in his ser- 
mons, he did so, not with the heat of a strongly persua<led man of 
energy, but with the meekness and charity of a retiring nature. 
How much he leant upon others apjiears in the narrative of his 
college life — S(^ different from the sturdy self-reliance of Johnson. 
Still more does this come out in Walton's well-known accoimt of 
his visit to the "Shunemite's House" in London, when he went 
up from Oxford to preach. Reaching London on the back of a 
horse that would not or could not run, wet, weary, weather-beaten, 
numb with wind and rain, he bitterly refused to be persua led that 
he could preach within tw^o days; but the Shunemite, Mrs Church- 
man, by cosy nursing, " enabled him to perform the office of the 
day," and having given him such a tas'e of the comfort of womanly 
ministration, persuaded him that he needed a wife, drew from the 
unresisting man in his gratitude a commis.si<m to procure one, 
and i)rovided him with her own daughter. — There is hardly to 
be found in history a more extreme instance of a man wanting 
in self-wnll, and submitting himself passively to the disposal of 
others.^ 

Opinions. — One of the many eulogistic sayings concerning 
Hooker is that, "should the English Constitution in Church 
and State be unhappily ruined, . . . the book" ('Ecclesi- 
astical Polity') "probably contains materials sufficient for re[»air- 
ing and rebuilding the shattered fabric." A less glowing admirer 
represents him as " the one adequate exponent of the religious 
ideas and policy of the age and reign of Elizabeth." Even this 
needs an explanation. Hooker was not, as this would imply, an 
im[)artial chronicler of all existing views of Church doctrine, 
ritual, and government. He was the cham[)ion of a religious 
party — of the adherents to Episcopacy. He expounded their 
views, and with such acceptance, that for more than 250 years 
he has been honoured as a main bulwark of the Church of Eng- 
land. Certainly he has a good claim to his title — " the judicious 
Hooker ! " The profound scholarship of the work, its " earnest 

1 Tlie story is doubted by Mr Keble, who also, by way of exalting Hooker'8 
virtue, maintains tliat, liis ineelcness and jiatience under his wile was not consti- 
tutional, but a ixiintiilly acquired self-tomniand. Hail old l/.aak Walton's ideal 
of virtue lieen tlie same as Mr Kel)le's, we shoulil probably never liave lieard of 
Hooker's passive obedience in domestic life ; l>ut if we doubt this fact, we niii'-t 
doubt many others that contirm it. In Walton's Biograpliy — and it is our only 
external authority — Hooker appears as an inactive man of fcelde constitution, 
yielding willingly to the guiclance of others. That he should show signs of an 
irritable temper in his writings is hardly to the purpose, if it eould be established. 
S^elf-assertion upon paper and self-assertiou in au actual 2)redeuce are two very 
different things. 



218 FROM 15S0 TO IGIO. 

longing cTesiie to see things brought to a peaceable end," its 
entire freedom from partisan heat, and consequent appearance 
of impartiality, go a long way to account for liis extraordinary 
popularity as a doctrinal writer. 

Another cause may have helped in some s»iall degree. We have 
already mentioned his occasional vagueness, his hazy application 
of general principles and parallel citations. This dimness of ex- 
pression has had curious results. Men of diametrically opposite 
opinions have sought to strengthen their cause with his authority. 
James II. was wont to say that Hooker's Polity converted him to 
Romanism. Bishop Hoadley, a Church polemic of Qu.^en Anne's 
reign, cited Hooker in confirmation of his views, that the form of 
Church government is a matter of Christian expediency. In ex- 
treme opposition to this, the High Church party re-edited Hooker 
as a main instrument in keeping the Anglican Church " near to 
primitive truth and apostolical order," as upholding the divine 
right of Episcopacy, and the doctrine of apostolical succession. 
Had Hooker expressed himself with greater distinctness, his repu- 
tation might have been less universal. 



ELEMENTS OF STYLK. 

Vocabulary. — Hooker's diction is not so modern as Sidney's. 
A glossary to Hooker would be at least ten times as large as a 
glossary to an equal amount of writing by Sidney. In great 
measure, of course, this is due to the difference of subject. By 
Swift he is coupled with Parsons the Jesuit as writing a purer 
style than other theologians of his time. He did not coin words 
like Jeremy Taylor, nor employ them in meanings warranted by 
derivation but not by usage — very common errors among his more 
pedantic contemporaries. His usages are not jteculiar and eccen- 
tric. Some of his words— such as "civil" for civilised, "regi- 
ment" for regimen or (jovernTnoit, "put in ure" for put in use or 
practice — are now obsolete, but they were good current English in 
his day. His command of words is good, but he has not the rich 
variety of Sidney, much less of Bacon. 

Seutnices. — Hooker affords our first example of an elaborate 
high-sounding "periodic style." His sentences, in their general 
character, are long and involved — an extreme contrast to the light 
and pointed style of John Lyly, though of their kind they are 
quite as finished. With all their excellences, they are not good 
models for English periods. In writing our first elaborate theo- 
logical treatise, his fine ear was irresistibly caught by the rhythm 
of Latin models ; and while he learned from them a more even 
proportion of sentence, he learned also to build an elaborate rhythm 



rJCIIAKD HOOKER. 219 

at tlie expense of native idiom.^ The following example of bis 
" elaborate collocation " is quoted by Dr Drake : — 

"Though for no other cause, yet for this, tliat posterit}' may know we 
have 1101 loosely, thiongli sik'iice, ])ermittcd tliinf^s to pass away as in a 
dieaiii, there shall be for men's iiifoniiatioii, extant this much coiicciiii"g 
the present state of the Cliurch of God established amongst us, and tiieir 
careful endeavours which would have upheld the same." 

Here the last clause is very awkwardly placed. In the following 
sentence the first clause is still more awkward, and towards the 
end the intliience of Latin models is still more apparent : — - 

"And l)e3'ond seas, of them which fled in the days of Quien Mary, some 
conteiriug themselves abro;Kl with the use of their own service-book athume 
aiUhoriscd hfore their dejiartitrr, out of the realm, others liking better the 
Common Prayer-book of the Church of Geneva translated, those smaller con- 
tentions before begun were by this nuans someivhat increased." 

In the parts italicised the violation of English idiom and order 
is peculiarly marked. As at least one-half of the Polity is written 
in this style, Hallara must have been thinking of very select pas- 
sages when he spoke of Hooker's " racy idiom." 

Sometimes, in his more animated moments, he surprises us with 
a run of shorter sentences. These occur but rarely, and are not 
long sustained. The following is an example : — 

"But wise men are men, and the truth is truth. That which Calvin did 
for establishment of his discipline, seemeth more commendable than that 
which he taught for the countenancing of it established. Nature worketh 
in us all a love to our own counsels. The contradiction of others is a fan to 
inflame that love. Our love set on fire to maintain that which once we have 
done, shariienetli the wit to dispute, to argue, and by all means to reason for 
it. Wherelore a marvel it were if a man of so great capacity," &c. 

Here he returns to his usital lengtli of sentence. Occasionally 
we meet with balanced passages. In such cases, from aiming at 
point, he is more idiomatic and also less intricate. The follow- 
ing conies much nearer the modern standard than our previous 
extracts : — 

"These men in whose nioutlis at the first sounded nothini; but mortifica- 
tion of the flesh, were come at tlie lengtli to think they might luwiiilly iiave 
their six or seven wives apiece ; they which at the {ir>t thought judgment 
and justice it-elf to be merciless cruelty, accounted at the length their own 
hands sanctified with being imbrued in Christian blood ; they who at the 



1 We have seen Hallam's conception of our author's sentences. Dr Drake's is 
more moderate, and nearer the facts : " Tliongh the words for the most lart are 
well chosen and pure, tlie arran<fenient of them into .sentences is intricate and 
harsli, and tornied almost e.xclusively on the iilioni aii'l construction of the Latin. 
Miieli streii;--tli and vigour are, deVixed Irom this adoption; but perspicuity, 
sweetness, and ea.se are too generally saeiiliced." 



2-20 FROM 15 TO IGIO. 

first were wont to beat down all dominion, and to urge agiinst poor con- 
stables 'kings of nations' ; had at the leni];th both consuls and kinj,'s of their 
own erection amongst themselves : finally, they which could not brook at 
the first that any man should seek, no not by law, the recovery of goods 
injuriously t:iken or withheld from him, were grown at the Inst to think 
tliey could not offer unto God more acceptable sacrifice, than by turning 
their a'lversaries clean out of house and home, and by enriching themselves 
with all kind of spoil and pillage ; which thing being laid to their charge, 
tliey had in a readiness their answer, that now the time was come, when 
according to the Saviour's promise 'the meek ones must inherit the ear'h ' ; 
and that their title hereunto was the same wdncli the righteous Israelites 
had unto the g ods of the wicked Egyjitians. " 

His inversions sometimes have the effect of putting the emphatic 
words in the emphatic places ; for example, in the following harsh 
construction : — 

" That which by wisdom he saw to be requisite for that people, was by as 
great wisdom compassed." 

Now quite as good emphasis might be had without such a 
sacrifice of euphony and idiom. But apart from this, the theory 
that all his inversions have this object is not tenable. His con- 
struction is ruled chiefly by fascination for the rhythm that goes 
with the Latin idiom. Thus, in a sentence quoted at p. 216, he 
weakens the emphasis by reserving the verb "doth dwell " to the 
end, after the fashion of the liatin, and that, too, when English 
idiom permitted the inversion. " Wherein doth dwell nothing but 
light and blessed immortality," &c., would have been perfectly 
good English idiom, and would have given better emphasis. But 
Hooker's ear was tuned to a foreign riiythm. A close examination 
of almost any passage would show great room for improvement in 
the way of emphasis. In no era of English style has much regard 
been paid to the placing of words except for rhythm. 

In the distribution of his matter into sentences, Hooker is more 
correct than Sidney is in the Apology. He observes much better 
the requirements of unity ; his aiming at the period prevented 
rambling. In this resjject he will bear comparison with any 
writer of the seventeenth century ; it helps greatly to give him a 
modern air. 

Parat/raphs. — Attention to clearness and simplicity in the struc- 
ture of paragraphs was a thing unknown in the age of Elizabeth, 
and Hooker was in this respect neither better nor worse than the 
good writers of his time. Sometimes when he is dealmg con- 
fusedly with an obscure subject, the connection between one sen- 
tence and another becomes very difficult to trace. Every sentence 
stands on its own bottom. It would be hard to find a more hope- 
lessly perplexed paragraph than the following. After close scru- 
tiny, we find that each sentence contains a different idea from its 
predecessor : — ■ 



RICIIAKD HOOKER. 221 

" Wherefore to return to our former intPDt of discovering the natural way, 
whereby rules have been found out eonceiiiitif; that goodness wlierewith tlie 
Will of man ougiit to be moved in Imninn actions ; as every tiling naturallv 
and necfssarily dotli desire the utmost good and ureatest iierleiti^n wlicreof 
Nature hath made it cajiable, even so man. Our felicity iherefcire being 
the object and aecompli>limt'nt of our desire, we cannot choose but wisli 
and covet it. All )>artiiular things which are subject unto action, tlie 
Will doth so far incline unto, as Heason judgelh thcTu the better for us, 
and consequently the more available to our tiliss. If Reason eir, we fall 
into evil, and are so far forth deprived of the general perfection we seek. 
Seeing therefore that for the framing of men's actions the knowledge it 
good from evil is necessary, it only resteth that we search liow this may be 
had. Neither must we suppose tiiat there necdeth one rule to kiiow the 
good and another the evil by. F<>r he that knoweth what is straight doth 
even thereby discern what is crooked, because the absence of straightness iu 
bodies cap.ible thereof is crookeilness. Goodness in actions is like unto 
straightness; wherefore that which is done well we term 7-i;iht. For as the 
straight way is most acceptable to him that travelleth, because by it ho 
Cometh soonest to his journey's end ; so in action, tlmt which doth lie ihe 
eveuest between us and the end we desire must needs be the littest for our 
use. Besides which fitness for use, there is also in rectitude, beaulj' ; 
as contrariwise in obliipiity, deformity. And that vvhirh is good in the 
actions of men, doth not only delight as ]irolitable, but as amiable al^o. 
In which consideration the Grecians most divinely have given to the 
active perfection of men a name expressing both beauty and goodness, 
because goodness in ordinary speech is for the most part applied only 
to that which is beneficial. But we in the name of goodness do hero 
imply both." 

Figures of Speech. — So far from being, as Hallam says, " rich in 
figures," Hooker is for his age singularly devoid of ornament. As 
among the great Elizabethan writers his languid vitality is a 
marked contrast to the general plenitude of life, so his unadorned 
gravity of style is a contrast to the general figurative exuberance. 
Similitudes might be quoted from him — some very apposite, and 
some very pleasing ; but the vein is neither almndant nor original. 
His habitual personification of nature is the manner of the time. 
If we regard law in its strict scientific meaning as an express com- 
mand sanctioned by threat of punishment, Hooker's extension of 
the term to the order of nature, the angelic manner of life, and 
suchlike, is metaphorical; but the metaphor neither began nor 
ended with Hooker. 



QUALITIES OF STYLR 

Simplicity. — In this as in other respects Hooker is very unequal 
Taken all in all, and compared with the best English standards, 
his style is not readily intelligible to a modern reader : apart from 
obsolete words, which might soon be mastered, the unfamiliar 
Latin idiom, and the elaliorate accunmlatiun of clauses, make it 
stitf and perplexing. This is the general character of his style ; 



222 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

occasional passages are more flowing and idiomatic, and may be 
read almost as fluently as good modern prose. 

As compared with the average of his contemporaries, he appears 
to advantage. He is nearly, if not quite, free from some of their 
prevailing vices ; he has few, if any, pedantic barbarisms ; and 
his pages are not encumbered with superfluous quotation and 
illustration. 

Clearness. — Speaking of Sidney, we remarked that in English 
literature, as in every other, exact expression is a thing of later 
growth. In such subjects as occupied our earliest writers, nar- 
ratives, practical treatises — on hawking, chess, shooting — sermons 
on moral duties, and the like, precision- is not so much a requisite ; 
there is little risk of confusion. It needs obscure and complicated 
subjects to test powers of exjjression. Not till we come to con- 
troversial books on Church doctrine do we feel the want of clear- 
ness, and impatiently consider how many tedious folio pages might 
have been anticipated by a little rigorous definition of terms at 
the beginning, and a strict adherence to the definitions throughout. 
The war of creeds and forms having been waged for the most part 
in the universal Church Latin, Hooker's 'Ecclesiastical Polity' is 
the first English work that makes us painfully aware of the con- 
fused thinking and confused expression of the time. 

On an easy subject Hooker is clear and orderly. In expounding 
a given body of opinions, he is comprehensive and lucid : witness 
his account of the doctrines of the Anabaptists. Under a severe 
strain of thought, he breaks down; he is incapable of reducing 
confusion into order. His Puritan opponents, Cartwright and 
Travers, were prejudiced in favour of narrow princijiles that his 
calmer mind readily felt to be narrow. But when he tried to rest 
his practical doctrines on broader principles, he only nmde con- 
fusion worse confounded. His opi>onents made their meaning 
unmistakable ; Hooker's real meaning remains somewhat of a 
problem to this day. They held that Scrijjture is the only rule of 
human conduct, and that Scripture lays down the Presbyterian 
form of Church government. Hooker's jjurpose seemingly was to 
maintain that Scripture i?, not the only y win of human conduct; 
but this he does so vaguely that not many years ago this purpose 
was triumphantly produced as " the key to the philosophy " of his 
book. Had we not happened to know from history what were the 
doctrines he sought to refute, the exact drift of the First Book 
would have remained a puzzle to all generations. In various 
places he declares his design, but in very perplexing language : — 

" Lest therefore a,\\y mnn should marvel wlicremito all these things tend, 
the drift and iiurpose of all is this, even to show in what manner, as every 
good and ]K'rfect gift, so tliis very gilt of good and i)erfict laws is derived 
from the Father of lights ; to teach men a reason why just and reasonable 



EICIIARD HOOKER. 223 

laws are of so grevit foi'ce, of so great use in the world ; nnd to inform their 
juiiids with sonit method of reduoing tlie laws wliercof there is present con- 
trovei-sj' unto tlieir first original causes, that so it maybe in every partioilar 
ordinance thereby the better discerned, whether the same be reasonable, 
just, and righteous, or no." 

Ill aiiotlier itlace he declares his purpose to be to show that 
"Scripture is not the only law whereby (Jod has (ipeneil His will 
toucliin,t:C fill things that may be done." Some study enables us 
to reconcile in some sort the two declarations of purpose ; but 
in the book itself he loses all sight of tliis purpose, and frames 
it as— what he elscAvhere declares it to be — an introduction to 
solve " a number of doul)ts and questions about the nature, kinds, 
and qualities of laws in general." 

This confusion of expression is a thing apart from any confu- 
sion of thought ; on that we do not enter here. A farther evidence 
of Hooker's imperfect expression is seen in the opposite theories that 
are fathered upon him. That so many should take shelter under 
his authority is a proof of their respect, but not of his clearness. 

The emotional qualities of Hooker's style may be dismissed 
briefly. He is for the most part intent upon quiet argument, 
quoting authorities and expounding j>rinci[)les. It is in the First 
Book chietiy that we find occasional passages having a poetical 
glow. 

IStrengtJi. — Viewed as a definition and exposition (tf the various 
modes of law, tliis First Book drew from the scrupulously clear 
and exact John Austin the strong epithet of "fustian" ; hut what- 
ever be its value in a scientific point of view, undoubtedly several 
])arts are written in a highly poetical strain of subdued grandeur, 
in admirable harmony with the sonorous dignity of the rhythm. 
The exciting causes of these warmer passages are the author's ad- 
miration of beneficent cosmic power, and his dread of what might 
happen were this power withdrawn. He shrinks with his whole 
heart from every form of jarring irregularity, from everything 
tliat disturbs and agitates; he worships whatever keeps these 
horrors in subjection, and admires warmly whatever follows a quiet • 
and peaceable course. His conception of the operations of nature 
would be very impressive and poetical were it not so familiar by 
repetition : — 

" Although we are not of opinion, therefore, as some are, that nature 
in worknig iiath before her certain exemplary liranghts or patterns, which 
subsisting in the bosom of tiie Highest, and being thence discovered, she 
lixeth her eye upon them, as travellers by sea upon the pole-star of the 
world, and that according thereunto she guidetli lier hand to work by 
imitation : altliough we rather embrace the oracle of Hippocrates, that 
'each thing, both in small and in great, fulfdleth the task which destiny 
hath set down ;' . . . nevertlieless, forasmuch as the works of nature 



224 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

are no less exact than if she did both behold and study how to express some 
absolute shape or mirror always present before her ; yea, such her dexterity 
and skill appeareth, that no intellectual creature in tlie world were able 
by capacity to do that which nature doth without capacity and knowledge. 
It cannot be but nature hath some director of infinite knowledge to guide 
her in all her ways." 

In the above, the glow of his admiration for order is chilled by 
his being compelled to own that nature is an unconscious instru- 
ment. He finds more congenial scope in admiring the perfect 
obedience of the " huge, mighty, and royal armies " of angels. 

His apprehension of a collapse of the order of nature contains 
some good expressions ; but the conclusion, as a piece of art, is 
very lame and ineffectual — indeed, an anti-climax : — 

"Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though 
it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws ; if those principal 
and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are 
made, should lose the qualities which now they have ; if the frame of that 
heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if 
celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volu- 
bility turn tliemselves any way as it might happen ; if the prince of the 
lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, 
should, as it were, througli a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to 
rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times 
and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mix- 
ture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth 
be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of tlie eartii pine way as chil- 
dren at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yii-ld them 
relief; — what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all 
serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of 
nature is the stay of the whole world? "^ 

Pathos. — In nearly every exhibition of feeling in Hooker's works 
there is a tinge of pathos. His craving for rest, quiet, and order 
is perpetually appearing. When, in his office at the Temple, he 
conceived the design of writing a final defence of Episcopacy, and 
had read many books, he made the following pathetic appeal to 
Whitgift :— 

" But, my lord, I shall never be able to finish what 1 have begun, unless 
I be removed into some quiet country parsonage, where I may see God's 
blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat mine own bread in peace 
and privacy. " 

Throughout his Polity we trace the working of the same spirit. 
There is a large mixture of pathos in the examples that we have 
quoted of his loftier flights. The rhapsody on law, which was so 

^ This passage is an instance of Hooker's want of originality and native power. 
The imagined contusion of the world is translated jiarticular for particular from 
Arnobius, — an unacknowledged plagiarism pointed out by Keble. Besides tlia 
noble rhythm, no part of the vigorous conception is Hooker's except the conclud- 
ing particular. Arnobius supposes the earth to be too dry for seeds to germin. 
ate ; Hooker too dry to " yield relief to her fruits." 



KICIIARD HOOKER. 22d 

distasteful scientifically to John Austin, we rejxard with a kindlier 
feeling when we keep in mind the character of the man. We see 
a feeble, dependent soul clinging with ecstasy to an idea that gives 
him comfort and strength : — 

"Of law, there can be no less arknowlod,i,'ed than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the liannoiiy of the world. All tiiiiig.s in heaven 
and earth do her homa^'e ; the veiy least as feeling her care, and the 
greatest as not exempted from her ])o\ver. Both angels and men, and 
creatures of what comlition soever, thonuli each in dilfeieiitsort and manner, 
yet all with uniform consent, admiring licr as the mother of their peace and 
joy." 

Another favourite subject in a similar vein is the desirability of 
peace and unity between Puritan and Prelatist — 

"Far more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these 
strifes) ... to be joined with you in bonds of indissoluole love and 
amity, to live as if our i)ersous being many our souls are hut one, lather 
than in .such dismembered sort to spend our few and wretched days in a 
tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions." 

The Ludicrous. — Such a genuine lover of peace as Hooker was 
not likely to exasperate by keen sarcasm. And, on the other 
hand, a man of his feeble constitution was not likely to have a 
genial flow of humour, or a broad, hearty sense of the ludicrous. 
Such humour as he has is very faint, and takes a sarcastic, ironical 
turn. In answering the Puritans, he states their doctrines gravely, 
very seldom allowing any trace of ridicule to cross his statement, 
and even then making the ridicule a])parent, not by epithets, but 
by bringing ludicrous incongruities to the surface in his exposi- 
tion. His manner was veiy difterent from the boisteious wit of 
Tom Nash, a champion on the same side. We have seen one 
example of hia irony (pp. 219-20). Here is another: — 

"Where they found men in diet, attire, furniture of house, or any other 
way, observers of civility and deeent order, su'di they reproved as being 
cai'nally-minded. Every word otherwise than si'veiely and sadly uttered 
seemed to pierce like a sword through them. If any man were ]ileasant, 
their manner was ])resently with deep sighs to repeat those words of our 
Saviour Clirist, ' ^Voe be to you whicli now laugli, for ye shall lament.' 
So great was their delight to be always in troiilde, that su( h as did tjuietly 
lead their lives, they judged of all other men to be in most dangerous case." 

To quote one or two passages like this without any of the con- 
text would give an exaggerated idea of the power of Honker's 
irony. Eead with the grave body of context, they strike us as 
but a very slight departure from the geneial gravity. In the 
above, which is a favourable examitle, the point is not brought 
out with equal force in all the sentences. 

Melody. — The general movement of Hooker's language is stiff, 
cumbrous, but richly musical Here and there, as we have seen, 

p 



226 FFxOM 1580 TO IGIO. 

his stiffness relaxes, and he warms into flowincr strains of solemn 
melody. The majority of our quotations are favourable examples 
of his rhythm. The opening sentence of the Polity (p. 219) — 
" Though for no other c.iuse, yet for this," etc. — is a tine example 
of a creacendo effect. The; first sentence of his paragraph <m the 
angels — " But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from 
the footstool to the throne of God," ifec. — has something of the 
movement of the sentence in Sir Thomas Browne's ' Hydriotaphia' 
that drew such exclamations of delight from De Quincey. 

The great cause of clumsiness in his general rhythm is an exces- 
sive use of heavy relative constructions : — 

"Thatwliiih hitherlo we have set down is (I liope) sufficient to show 
their brutisliness which iiuagiae that religion and virtue 'are only as men 
will account of them." 

"Of what account the blaster of Sentences was in the Church of Rome, 
the same and move amongst the picai;heis of Rerormed Churclies Calvin had 
purchased ; so tliat the perfectest divines were judged they which were skil- 
fulh'St in Calvin's writings. . . . Till at Icngtli the discipline, which 
was at the first so weak, that without the stall' of tlieir approbation, who were 
not subject unto it themselves, it had not brougb.t others under subjection, 
began now to challenge universal obedience, and to enter into open conflict 
with those very churches, which in desperate extremity had been relievers 
of it." 

Even these passages are not without a certain musical charm, 
especially if we disregard the meaning and attend only to the 
succession of the syllables. 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Exposition. — Hooker's powers of exposition are tested by the 
book on Law, his most abstruse subject. Viewed simply as a 
piece of exposition, this book contains little to profit the student. 
In this particular respect, it is bad even by the standard of the 
time. Its main faults have been specified under the Paragraph 
and the quality of Clearness. The paragraph on the discovery of 
rules of action, quoted to illustrate his worst, is a piece of very 
confused writing. On a subject requiring closeness of thought, 
he has not the qualities that made up for bad method in some of 
his conteui|ioraries ; he has neither felicity nor variety of expres- 
sion, nor fulness of exam|ile ami illustration. These remarks 
apply chiefly to the First Book : his imperfect expression is most 
ap[)arent there. In his arguments on ritual and doctrine he is 
more on beaten ground, and proceeds with less confusion. 

Fersuasioii. — The 'Ecclesiastical Polity' is said to have had 
great influence. It is a good example to show how much in per- 
suasion de])ends upon the manner. Hooker added little or nothing 
to what Whitgift had urged against the Presbyterian champion, 



JOHN LYLY. 227 

Cartwright ; and in clear. less, terseness of expression, ;ind logical 
force, is far inferior to his patron. His main contriimtion is his 
elaborate and (in a logical point of view) clumsy attenifit to prove 
what Whitgift had siuiiily asserted or taken for granted, that not 
everything required for tlie conduct of human affairs is to be found 
in Scripture. His arguments in the first two Books had little 
weight with the Puritans. Once they saw his drift, they admitted 
the general propositions, but questioned his imi)lied conclusions. 
Law was a good thing, and should be ol eyed, but not bad law; 
not everything was found in Scripture — but the Presbyterian gov- 
ernment, and tlieir views about liturgies, vestments, and sacra- 
ments, were foiind in Scripture. Wliilc Hookers arguments were 
neither new nor convincing, his moderation, singular in that age, 
gained him a hearing, and his earnest advocacy of the blessings of 
union and order was like oil on the troubled waters. Whitgift's 
strenuous hostility and unsparing rigour of argument set his 
opponents on edge, and steeled them against conviction ; Hooker's 
mild and occasionally hazy statement of the same arguments won 
the doubtful at once, and by degrees made friends out of decided 
enemies. 

JOHN LYLY or LILLIE, 1554-1606. 

This ingenious writer deserves a place of minor prominence in a 
history of prose — partly from the intrinsic merits of his style, and 
partly from the voluminous controversy that has been raised upon 
it. He is generally known as "The Euphuist," and his style is 
called Euphuism. We shall analyse this Eu[)huism, and try to 
make out what it is, where its elements came from, and what 
influence it had upon its age as a model of composition. 

Few particulars of Lyly's life are on record. We know only 
that he was born in Kent, that he was a student at Magdalen, 
Oxford, that he was jjatronised by Loid Burghley, and tliat from 
1577 to 1593 he was a hanger-on at Court and wrote phxys. His 
phiys had no small reputation, coming immediately before Shak- 
speare. Ben Jon.son gives him honourable mention ; and, in a 
bookseller's pufF of the next generation, he is described as " the 
only rare poet of that time, the witty, comical, facetiously quick 
and unparalleled John Lilly, Master of Arts." His chief work in 
prose, apart from prose dramas and some assistance to Tom Nash 
in the Marprelate controversy, is a moral romance known as 
'Eu[ihues' (whence his name Euphuist). It is in iwo parts, 
'Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit' (1579), and 'Enphues and his 
England' (15S0). Eu^jhues, a gay young Athenian of good family, 
travels in the first part to Naples, in the second part to I'^ngland ; 
the plot is subservient to the development of the young man's 
moral nature, and gives occasion for discourses on religion, educa- 



228 - FliOM 1560 TO 1610. 

tion, friendship, and other virtues, with a great many love-passages. 
The book suited the taste of the time, and was popular : according 
to Blount the bookseller, "all our Ladies were then his Scholars; 
and that Beauty in Court which could not parley Euphuism was 
as little regarded as she which now" (1632) "speaks not French." 
With all his pojjularity the ingenious, gentle, humorous little man 
received no solid patronage. There are extant two petitions of his 
to the Queen complaining of his deferred hopes of favour. He 
had hung on for thirteen years in hopes of getting the Mastership 
of the Pievels; and in his second petition (1593), despairing of 
this, he begs — 

"Some land, some f,'ood fines, or forfeitures that should fall by the just 
fall of these most i'alse traitors, that seeing nothing will come by the Revels, 
I may prey upon tlie Rc'bels. Tliirteen yeais your Highness' servant, but 
yet noihing. Twenty friends that tliough they say they will be sure I find 
them sure to be slow. A thousand hopes but all notliing ; a hundred pro- 
mises but yi^t notliing. Tlius casting up the inventory of my friends, hopes, 
])romises, and times, the summa totalis amountetli to just nothing. My 
last will is shorter than mine invention : but three legacies, patience to my 
creditors, melancholy without measure to my friends, and beggary without 
shame to my family." 

What were his fortunes after this, whether Elizabeth heard his 
petition, is not known. Probably the frugal Queen gave him 
some relief. His admiring bookseller says, though without express 
reference to the petition, that he was "heard, graceil, and re- 
warded." He died at the comparatively early age of fifty-two. 

The interest in Lyly was revived in this century by Sir Walter 
Scott's attempt to reproduce a Euphuist in the person of Sir 
Piercie Shafton. In the heat of attacking and defending Lyly 
and his style, of arguing as to whether he invented Euphuism or 
only fell in with a ruling taste, whether he vitiated our language 
or caught a taint, the disputants have not always kept in view 
what peculiarly belongs to Lyly's mannerism and what does not. 
His style has good points and bad points, peculiar affectations 
and affectations common to the age. A discussion on Euphuism 
becomes hopelessly tangled and complicated unless the leading 
elements of his manner are kept distinct. Here it may be well, 
without pretending to give an exhaustive analysis, to distinguish 
80U)e particulars that should not be confused. Three or four may 
be specified. 

(i.) Neatness and finish of sentence. — Lyly's sentences are re- 
markably free from intricacy and inversion, much shorter, more 
pithy and direct than w^as usual. We must come down at least a 
century before we find a structure so lucid. To be sure, his matter 
was not heavy, and did not tempt him to use either weighty 
sentences or learned terms : still, credit to whom credit is due ; 



JOHN LYLY. 229 

his sentences, as sentences, though not in perfect modern form, 
are the most smooth and finished of that time. His chief fault ia 
the want of variety, " an eternal aflfectation of sententiousness," 
says an old critic, " keeps to such a formal measure of his periods 
as soon grows tiresome, and so by confining himself to shape his 
sense so frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious 
or harmonious, abridges that variety which the style should be 
admired for." 

(2.) Fanciful antithesis and ivord-play. — The passage above 
quoted from his petition to Elizabeth is an extreme example. In 
the ' Eu] limes ' there are few passages so fantastically antithetical ; 
tlie antithesis of the 'Eupliues ' is more a kind of balance in the 
clauses, with or without ojjposition in the matter. Thus, when 
young Euphues is counselled by aged Philautus, he replies : — 

"Father and friend (your age showeth the one, your honesty the other), 
I atn neither so suspicious to mistrust your goodwill, nor so sottish to mis- 
like your good counsel. As I am therefore to thank you for the tirst, so it 
stands upon me to think better on tlie hitter. I mean not t'l cavil with you 
as one loving sojiliistry : neither to control you, as one having superiority; 
tlie one would bring my talk into the susjiicion of fraud, the other convince 
nie of folly." 

When Euphues rejects the good advice, Lyly moralises thus : — 

"Here ye may behold. Gentlemen, how lewdly wit standeth in his own 
light, how he deenietii no penny good silver but his own, preferring the 
blossom befoie the fruit, the bud liel'ore the tlower, the green blade before 
the ripe ear of coi-n, his own wit before all men's wisdoms. Neither is that 
reason, seeing for the most ])art it is proper to all those of sharp capacity to 
esteem of tiu-niselves as most jirojier: if one be hard in conceiving, they 
pronounce liim a dolt; if given to study, they proclaim him a dunce: if 
merry, a jester : if sad, a saint : if full of words, a sot : if without speech, a 
cijiher. If one argue with them boldly, then he is impudent: if coldly, an 
innocent : if there be reasoning of divinity, they cry, Qiice supra nos, nihil 
ad 7108; if of humauitj', sententias loquitur carnifex." 

Lyly did not invent this measured balance : like Johnson, he only 
took up, trimmed, and carried to excess a structure that others 
used in a rougher form and less frequently. A more measured, 
neat, pointed, ;iiid ornate style of prose was imported from Italy 
in Henry VIII. 's reign by scholars and travelled men of fashion 
(p. 189). It appears in our literature long before Lyly. It would 
seem to have been encouraged by Elizabeth.^ We see how Lyly 
strained his wit to gain her favour; and in 1567, a quarter of a 

^ An able monograph by Herr F. Landmann {Der Euphuismus, Giefsen, 
Keller, 1881) traces Lyly's ' Euphuism ''back to Antonio de Guevara's ' Golden 
Book of Marcus Aurelius' (see ante, p. 198). Of this Spanish prose romance 
Ileir Lanibiiauu regards ' Euphues ' as an iiiutation both in matter and in manner. 
This is so far true : still Lyly's " Euphuism " has distinction enough to deserve 
credit as something more than au imitation — as a marked variety iu a peculiar 
kind. 



230 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

century before, we find Roger Ascham exerting himself as follows. 
The letter is addressed to Elizabeth, though she is in the third 
person, and it has the same object as Lyly's petition : — 

"I wrote once a little book of shooting: King He.vry, her most noble 
father, did so well like and allow it, as he gave me a living fur it ; when he 
lost his life I lost my living ; but noble King E<lward again did first revive 
it by his goodness, then did increase it by his liberality ; thirdly, did con- 
firm it liy his authority under tlie great seal of England, which patent all 
this time was both a great pleasure ami profit to me, saving that one un- 
pleasant word in that patent, called ' daring pleasure,' turned me alter to 
great displeasure ; for when King Edward went, his pleasure went with 
him, and my whole living went away with them both." 

Here we have the same striving at verbal conceits — differing from 
Lyly's only in being less ingenious and polished. Lyly, it is clear, 
cannot be charged either with inventing this aflfectation or with 
introducing it to Court. 

(3.) Excess of similitudes, parallels, and instances. — This is the 
most striking part of Lyly's mannerism. It is for this that he is 
censured by Sidney, and accused of " rifling up all Herbarists, all 
stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes." To the same effect he is 
attacked by Michael Drayton : while Sidney is praised because 
he— 

" Did first reduce 

Our tongue from Lillie's writing then in nse ; 

Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, 

Playing with words, and idle similies. " 

Not only does Lyly ransack natural history for comparisons, he 
even goes the length of inventing natural history ; at least, whether 
he is the inventor or not, many of his comparisons refer to fabu- 
lous properties. The following are examples. Take first " Euphues 
to the Gentlemen Scholars of Athens." 

" The merchant that travelleth for gain, the husbandman that toileth for 
increase, the lawyer that pleadeth for gold, the craftsman that seeketh to 
live by his labour — all these, after they have fatted themselves with sufii- 
cient, either take their ease, or less pain than they were accustomed. 
Hippomanes ceased to run wdien he had gotten the goal. Hercidcs to labour 
when he had ohtaiued the victory. Mercury to pipe when he had cast 
Argus in a slumber. The ant, though she toil in summer, yet in winter 
she leaveth to travail. The bee, though she delight to suck the fair flower, 
yet is she at last cloyed with honey. The s])ider that weaveth the finest 
thread ceaseth at the last when she hath finished her web. But in the 
action and stu«iy of the mind (Gentlemen) it is lar otherwise, for he that 
tasteth the sweet of learning enilnreth .nil the sour of labour. He that 
seeketh the depth of knowledge, is as it were in a Labyrinth, in the which 
the farther he goeth, the farther he is from the end : or like the bird in 
the liuie-bush, which, the more she striveth to get out, the faster she 
sticketh in. And certainly it may be said of learning as it was feigned 
of Nfidar, the drink of tlie Gods, the which the more it was drank, the 
more it would overflow the bi im of the cup ; neither is it far unlike the 



JOHN LYLY. 231 

stone that groweth in the river of Caria, the which the more it is cut the 
more it increascth. And it fareth with him that roUoweth it as witli 
him that hath the dropsy," &c. 

Euplmes liaving been rather sharply reproached with inconsis- 
tency by his friend Philautus, makes the following reply : — 

" The admonition of a true friend should be like the practice of a wise 
physician, who wrappeth his sharp pills in fine sui^mt ; or the ciuiiiin;:^ Chir- 
urpeon, who lancing a wound with an iion, injnu-diately applicth to it 
soft lint ; or as motliers deal with tlicir children for worms, wlio jtut their 
bitter seeds into sweet raisins. If this order had been observed in thy 
discourse, that interlacing sour taunts with sugared counsel, bearing as 
well a gentle rein as using a hard snaflle, thou nduditest have done more 
with the whisk of a wand, than now thou canst with tlie yirick of the s])ur, 
and avoid that which now tlion mayest not, extreme unkindness. IJut 
thou art like that kind judge which I'rDperiins noteth, wiio condemning 
his friend, catised him for the more ease to he hanged with a silken twist. 
And thou like a friend cuttest my throat with a razor, not with a hat' In-t, 
for my more honour. But wh)' should I set down the office of a friend, 
when thou, like our Athenians," &c. 

Tlie following is what we may suppose to have been imitated by 
the gallants of the Court : — 

" For as the hop, the pole being never so high, groweth to the end, or 
as the dry beech kindled at the root never leavctli until it come to the 
top : or as one dro]) of poison dispeiseth itself into every vein, so affec- 
tion having caught hold of my heart, and the sparkles of love kindled 
my liver, will suddenly, though secretly, llame up into my head, and 
spread itself into every sinew." 

"What cruelty more unfit for so comely a lady than to spur him that 
gallojud, or to let him blood in the heart, whose vein she should have 
staunched in the liver? But it fared with me as with the heib basil, the 
which the more it is crushed, the sooner it springeth ; or tlie rue, which 
the oftener it is cut the bitter it groweth ; or the poppy, which the more 
it is trodden with the feet, the more it tlourisheth." 

It serves no good purpose to apply the term Euphuism to any- 
thing but the tricks of style characteristic of Lyly, the author of 
* Euphues.' We only make confusion when we apply the name 
to quaint punning and antithesis, cr to superabundance of illustra- 
tion and exemplification. These faults, such as they were, Lyly 
shand with his time. His peculiarity lay not so much in hosts of 
parallels and instances, as in the sententious pointed way of ex- 
pressing them. That is the Euphuistic foj-ni : the Eu|ihuistic 
substance is the copious illustration of everything pertaining to 
man from animals, plants, and minerals, real or fabulous. The 
form and substance taken together constitute Euphuism proper, 
the real invention of Lyly, and, it would appear, for some short 
time the fashionable aflfectation at Court. 

If by Euphuism we understand, as seems most reasonable, the 
peculiar manner of the author of 'Euphues,' we cannot accept ^Ir 



232 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

Marsh's statement that " the quality of style called Euphuism has 
more or less prevailed in all later periods of English literature." 
It is quite true that ingenious playing upon words has been a 
favourite practice "in all later periods of English literature." 
But Lyly's style had very little influence on literature, either for 
evil or for good. All sorts of antithetical pranks with w^ords 
prevailed before he wrote, especially in the language of gallantry, 
ridiculed in 'Love's Labour Lost' To this affectation he pro- 
bably added nothing but greater polish of form. His similitudes 
from nature, whether simple, far-fetched, or spurious, were so 
overdone that the evil wrought its own cure. There were pro- 
bably Euphuists in private circles and among inferior writers ; 
but in higher, and even in middling literature, the affectation was 
too excessive to last, too characteristic to be imitated. Further, 
even the good points were not imitated. Mannerists like John- 
son, Macaulay, or Carlyle, have an influence for good on many 
that do not adopt their most startling peculiarities. But Lyly's 
example carried no weight ; his lucid neatness of sentence, and 
orderly way of producing instances, perished with his worthless 
afl'ectations. English style immediately after him was not less 
prolix and intricate, nor less overburdened with clumsy quota- 
tions, than it was before him. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the style of Scott's " Piercie 
Shatton " is far from being a reproduction of Euphuism as it is in 
Lyly. Perhaps the nearest prototype of Shafton is Sidney's cari- 
cature of a pedantic schoolmaster " Rhombus " in ' The Lady of 
the May.' ^ 

OTHER WRITERS. 

CHURCH CONTEOVERSIALISTS — 1580-160O. 

Some of the writers now to be mentioned wrote before the year 
1580; all of them wrote after it. The struggle between the two 
Church parties passed through a crisis in the latter part of Eliza- 
beth's reign. Hooker, as we have seen, was the chief literary 
champion of Episcopacy : in their capacity as writers, the others 
may be clustered round him. 

John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1530-1604, did j^rob- 
ably more than any one man to establish the Church of England. 
He was born in Lincolnshire, and studied at Cambridge. During 
the tirst half of Elizabeth's reign he rose to distinction, filling im- 
portant oflBces in the University. He was made Archbishop of 
Canterbury in 1583, and distinguished himself by his rigorous 

1 Lyly's ' Eiiphues' is issued in Mr Arber's series of English Eeprints, with 
a useful Introduction, containing several notices ot Euphuism at different dates. 
Mrs Humphrey Ward has made a careful study of Lyly for the ' Eucyclopaedia 
Britaunica.' 



CilUECH CONTROVERSIALISTS. 233 

policy against the Presbyterians. His ' Defence of his Answer to 
Cartwriglit's Admonition,' first published in 1574, is reprinted by 
the Parker Society. A strenuous, sagacious man, he writes a vig- 
orous, straightforward, and clear style, seasoned with open personal 
invective and ridicule. His sentences, without being made after 
any peculiar form, are short and simple : he kcei)s too close a grasp 
on the argument, and is too eagerly bent upon refuting, to have 
time for the elabnration of periods. 

Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603), "the incarnation of Presbyte- 
rianism," and for some time a thorn in the side of Whitgift, was 
born in Hertfordshire. He encountered Whitgift at Cambridge, 
and was worsted, being deprived of the Lady Margaret Professor- 
ship and of his fellowshi[) in Trinity, and thus driven from the 
University in 1572. After spending some years as English Chap- 
lain at Antwerp, he returned, got into trouble with the Church, 
and was imprisoned. In his later years he seems to have been 
conciliated by Whitgift, and to have made a less violent opposi- 
tion. His works are — 'An Admonitinn to Parliament,' 1572 ; 'An 
Admonition to the People of England,' 1589; 'A Brief Apology,' 
1596 ; also 'A Directory of Church Government,' and 'A Body of 
Divinity,' published after his death. Cartwright was a very pop- 
ular preacher. He writes with great fervour, but his style is much 
more involved and antiquated than Whitgift's, and he has much 
less argumentative force. 

Martin Marprelate wrote some virulent, coarsely humorous 
personal tracts on the Puritan side about the time of the Spanish 
Armada (158S). Martin's real name is a greater mystery than 
Junius ; the latest conjecture is that he was a Jesuit. At one 
time he was identified with John Ponry, who seems to have been 
a mild, much-sutfering Puritan Welshman, quite incapable of any- 
thing so boisterous. The titles of the tracts are such as " The 
Epitome," "The Supplication," "Hay any Work for a Cooper 1" 
Martin wms answered in an equally personal strain by " witty ToM 
Nash," who chose such titles as "An Almond for a Parrot" (equi- 
valent to " A sop for Cerberus "), and " Pap with a Hatchet " ^ (an 
expression for doing a kind thing in an unkind way). 

Robert Parsons or Persons (1546-1610), the daring and skilful 
pioneer of the Jesuits in England, is praised by Swift for the 
purity and vigour of his English style. A native of Somei-setshire, 
he was educated at Oxford, and became a celebrated tutor. Being 
expelled from his College in 1574 (according to Fuller, for em- 
bezzlement of College money), he joined the Jesuits, and was the 
moving spirit of the Popish plots against Elizabeth before the 
Spanish Armada. In his later years he presided over the English 
College at Rome. 

1 Sometimes ascribed to Lyly, the Eupbuist. 



234 FROM 1580 TO IGIO. 

CHRONICLES, HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES. 

The series of Chroniclers is continued in tliis period by John 
Stow (1525-1605) and John Speed (1552-1629), both tailors by 
trade. Stow, a genial industiious creature, after publishing a 
'Summary of English Chronicles' in 1565, became ambitious to 
write a great chronicle of England that should surpass every other 
in number and accuracy of facts, quitted his tailor's board, and 
walked through England searching for documents that had been 
dispersed by the suppression of the monasteries. His great work 
was never published, but in 1598 he brought out a 'Survey of 
London,' which was the basis of subsequent accounts of the 
metropolis, and in 1600 ' Flores Historiarum,' The Flowers of the 
Histories (of England). In his last yeais he received from King 
James a recommendation to the charity of the public, and stood in 
churclies to receive alms — so ill was his humble industry rewarded. 
With all his diligence he is said to have been able to add little to 
the stock of chi'onicled facts. — Speed seems to have lived more 
comfortal)ly, and, working with equal industry, to have been more 
discriminating in his choice of authorities.' He published a ' His- 
tory of Great Britain' in 1614. Previously, in 1606, he had pub- 
lished a Collection of Maps, including maps of the English shires, 
each map curiously bordered with drawings of inhabitants, towns, 
notable buildings, &c. The balanced structure of his titles is char- 
acteristic of the time. His Map of the World is "drawn according 
to the truest descriptions, latest discoveries, and best observations 
that have been made by English or strangers ; " the outlines of the 
Great Southern Continent " rather show there is a land, than descry 
either land, people, or commodities." 

Three writers, who pretend to a weightier style than Stow or 
Speed, may be called Historians. Sir John Hayward (1560- 
1627), LL.D. of Cambridge, was patronised by Essex, imprisoned 
by Elizabeth, knighted by James, and made one of the two histori- 
ographers of the abortive Chelsea College. He wrote a ' Life and 
Reign of Henry IV.' (1599); 'Lives of the three Norman Kings 
of England' (1613); and a 'Complete History of Edward IV.,' 
with ' Certain Years of Queen Elizabeth's Reign,' published in 
1630, after his death. Hayward was the subject of one of Bacon's 
a])othegms. Elizabeth, much incensed at his history, asked 
"Whether there were no treason contained in \tV' "No, ma- 
dam," answered Bacon, "for treason, I cannot deliver opinion that 
there is any, but very much felony." "How and wherein?" 

1 Speed's superior accuracy and rejection of fables is no doubt partly due to 
his having had the advice oi Sir Robert CoWni (1570-1631), a man of property 
and good position, who made it his hobby to collect every sort of document re- 
lating to the history of England. 



CIinONICLEUS, 235 

" Becaitse he has stolen manij of his sentences and conceits out of 
Cornelius Tacitus." Jeremj'^ Taylor in return did Hayward the 
honour to steal some ideas from his ' Sanctuary of a Troubled 
Soul.' Richard Knolles (1549-1610), P'ellow of Lincoln, Oxford, 
and Master of the Free School at Sandwich, wrote a ' Histoiy of 
the Turks,' and other works relating to the Ottoman Empire. 
Johnson, who read Knolles for his 'Irene,' in a paper on History 
('Kambler,' 122), says : "None of our writers" (of history) "can, 
in my opinion, justly contest the sujoeriority of Knolles, who, in 
his ' History of the Turks,' has displayed all the excellencies that 
narration can admit. His style, though somewhat obscured by 
time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated, 
ami clear. A \\ onderful multiplicity of events is so artfully arranged, 
and so distinctly explained, that each facilitates the knowledge of 
the next. Whenever a new personage is introduced, the reader is 
prepared by his character for his actions ; when a nation is first 
attacked, or city besieged, he is made acquainted with its history 
or situation ; so that a great part of the world is brought into 
view." The estimate is excessive, even as made in Johnson's time. 
The distinctness of arrangement, and the geographical sketches, 
were due more to the character of the subject than to any suj)eri- 
ority of method : these " excellencies " were easy in narrating the 
steps of a conquest through a foreign country. Knolles's sentences 
are long and rambling — prolonged by successive lelativc clau.ses 
starting each from the one that goes before. Samuel Daniel 
(1562-1619), the poet, wrote a ' History of England from the Con- 
quest to the Accession of Henry VIL' It is praised by Hallam for 
its purity of diction, being written in the current English of the 
Court, and free from scholarly stiffness and pedantry. The struc- 
ture of the sentences is easy to the extent of negligence. 

Two or three Antiquaries are usually mentioned among the 
prose writers of this period ; perhaps because, though they wrote 
chietly in Latin themselves, they furnished materials for the Eng- 
lish prose of other writers. William Camden (1551-1623), Head- 
master of Westminster School, wrote the 'Britannia,' ami founded 
a Chair of History in Oxford. Sir Henry Spelman (1562-1604), 
Sheriff of Norfolk, a legal and ecclesiastical antiquary, is fanred as 
a restorer of Saxon literature, having founded a Saxon Professor- 
ship at Cambridge. Sir Robert Cotton has been already men- 
tioned as a collector of historical documents ; he is not said to have 
written anything. 

Chroniclers of ISrARiTiME Discovery. — The enterprising naval 
worthies in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, if they had no poet, 
were not without their clironiclers. Many of their vuya:,^es to 
"descry new lands" in America, or in the Southern Continent, 
have been put on record. The chief of this department of history 



236 FIIOM 1580 TO 1610. 

is Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616), Lecturer on Cosmography at 
Oxford, and an iictive correspondent with the foreign geographers, 
Ortelius and .Mercator. In 1598, 1599, and 1600, he ]iublished 
'The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries 
of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the Remote 
and Furthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, within the compass of 
these 1500 years.' Very interesting reading for persons with the 
proper taste for their subject-matter, Hakluyt's narratives have no 
charms of stvle. The same may 1)6 said of Samuel Purchas (1577- 
1628), ' Hackluytus Posthumus,' B.D. of Cambridge, who continued 
Hackluyt, and wrote 'Purchas his Pilgrimage,' containing an account 
of all the religions of the world. 

Some of the hardy mariners told their own story — as Jolin Davis 
(of Davis Straits, an early searcher for the North-West Passage), 
and Sir Richard Hawkins, who went in quest of land to the south. 
Sir Walter Raleigh, the "discoverer of Guiana," wall be mentioned 
presently. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

The versatile Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) wrote some of the 
most flowing and modern-looking prose of this jieriod ; and liad his 
subject-matter been less antiquated, we should have gone over his 
peculiarities at some length. He is, perhaps, the most dazzling 
figure of his time : his high position at the Court of Elizabeth, 
gained not by birth, but by personal charms and merits ; his con- 
duct against the Armada and at Cadiz ; his American enterprises; 
his two new imports, tobacco and the potato ; his unjust imprison- 
ment by King James, — made him to the people of London the 
most wonderful of living men ; and he still holds the highest rank 
among our traditional heroes. His principal writings are — ' The 
Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana,' 
published in 1596, and his ' History of the World,' composed dur- 
ing his imprisonment. The ' Discovery' is a matter-of-fact record 
of his own voyage, his dealings with the natives, and his impres- 
sions of the scenery. It was much ridiculed at the time by his 
jealous enemies, but there is nothing incredible in what he pro- 
fesses to liave seen, though he was too sanguine in his beliefs as 
to the splendour of the parts of the empire that he had not seen. 
As regards the style, he " neither studied phrase, form, nor 
fashion ; " yet at times he shows his natural power of graphic 
description. The following is perhaps his best ; he describes the 
" overfalls of the river of Caioli, which roared so far off": — • 

" When we ran to the tops of the first hills of tiie plains adjoining to the 
river, we beheld that wonderful breach of waters, which ran tiown Caroli ; 
and might from tliat mountain see the river how it ran in tliree parts, above 
twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in siglit, 



MISCELLANEOUS WKITERS. 237 

every one as high over the other :is a clmrch tower, wliich fell with that fury, 
that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it liad been covered all over 
with a trreat shower of rain ; and in some places we took it at the first for a 
smoke that had risen over some great town." 

The ' History of the World ' is a work of erudition rather thnn 
a narrative — going off into general dissertations on the origin of 
government, the nature, use, and abuse of magic, &c. ; comparing 
the personages of Scripture with the jtersonagcs of heathen myth- 
ology ; discussing at great lenyth such vexed questions as the site 
of Paradise, the ])lace where the ark rested, the local dispersion 
of the Sons of Noah, &c. ; and in the classical history criticising 
accounts of battles and campaigns with the sagacity of a practical 
man. The only parts of the book that any modern reader would 
care to peruse are some parts of the Greek, Macedonian, and Roman 
history — where his estimates of events in war and in policy are 
entitled to respect ; — the [ireface to the work ; and the conclusion. 
Only the preface and the conclusion have much literary value ; 
tliey are among the finest remains of Elizabethan jjrose. Critics 
often incautiously speak as if the whole work were written in the 
same strain, A grave melancholy runs through them, the natural 
mood of an ambitious spirit and a strong confident wit chastened 
but not broken by slander and imprisonment, writing in " the 
evening of a tempestuous life." Especially remarkable are the 
passages on Death. In the preface he says : — 

" But let every man value his own wisdom, as he jdeaseth. Let the rich 
man think all fools, tliat cannot ei|ual his al)undance ; the Revenger esteem 
all negligent that have not trodden down their ojiposites ; the I'olitiiian, all 
gross that cannot merchandise their faith : Yet when we once conie in siglit 
of the Port of death, to wliich all winds drive us, and wlien by letting fall 
that fatal Anchor, which can never be weighed again, the naviuation of this 
life takes end : Then it is, I say, that our own cogitations (those sad and 
severe cogitations, formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) re- 
turn again, and pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our 
life past." 

In the same strain he concludes his history : — 

" It is therefore death alone that can suddenly make man to know him- 
self. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but Abjects, and humbles 
them at the instant ; makes them cry, complain, and lepent ; yea, even to 
hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and 
proves him a beggar ; a naked beggar, which hath interest in nuthing, but 
in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a Glass before the eyes of the 
most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness ; 
and they acknowledge it. 

" elo(iuent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could advise, thou 
hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the 
worhi hath flatteretl, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised ; 
thou liast drawn together ail the tar-stretched gieatness, all the j)ride, 
cm Ity, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two 
nain.w words, Hie jacet." 



238 FROM 1580 TO 1610. 

Raleigh's other works are a treatise on Ship-building, ' Maxims 
of State,' the ' Cabinet Council,' the ' Sceptic,' and ' Advice to his 
Son.' In worldly wisdom, this last is equal to Bacon's Essays, 
though the subjects of advice are more commonplace. 

William Cecil, Lord Burleigh (1522-1598), like Raleigh, wrote 
advice for his son under the title ' Precepts or Directions for the 
Well-ordering and Carriage of a Man's Life,' a digest of common- 
place advice on the choice of a wife, the management of a house- 
hold, the danger of suretiship, and suchlike. 

Thomas Dekker, the dramatist, an antagonist of Ben Jonson's, 
wrote ' Seven Deadly Sins of Loudon ' (i6o6), ' The Gull's Horn- 
book ' (1609), and other ephemeral productions — burlesque satires 
of the extreme fashionable world, of the bucks and girls of the 
period. 

King James I. had a literary turn : he wrote ' A Counterblast 
to Tobacco,' and a work on ' Demonology.' Neither of these 
pedantic compositions would have survived had they been written 
by a less distinguished personage. 

The unfortunate Sir Thomas Overbury (1531-1613),— who, after 
figuring brilliantly at the Court of James as the favourite of the 
King's favourite, Robert Carr, was mysteriously cut off by slow 
poison, in ctmsequence of his op^xising Carr's marriage with the 
Countess of Essex, — wrote ' Characters of Witty Descriptions of 
the Properties of Sundry Persons.' Fanciful word-play, we have 
seen, existed at Court before Lyly's ' Euphuism ' : the sermons of 
the King's admired preachers are one evidence that it continued 
when the temporary fashion of I'^uphuism was gone ; Overbury's 
chai-aciers are another and a stronger. Take as a sample his de- 
scription of a tinker : — 

" He seems to lie very devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage ; and 
sometimes in liumility goes barel'oot, therein making necessity a virtue. His 
house is as ancient as Tubal-Cain's, and so is a renegade by antiquity ; yet 
he proves himself a gallant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back ; or 
a plulosopher, for he bears all his substance about him. . . . Souiarches 
he all over England with his bag and baggage; his conversation is irreprov- 
able, tor he is ever mending. He observes truly the statutes, and therefore 
had rather steal than beg, in which he is irreuiovably constant, in spite of 
whips or imprisonment. . . . Some would take him to be a coward, 
but, believe it, he is a lad of mettle. ... He is very provident, for he 
will tight with but one at ouce, and then also he had rather submit than be 
counted obstinate." 



CHAPTER IIL 



FBOM 1610 TO 164a 



PEANCIS BACOIT. 

1561 — 1626. 

Were we to place authors strictly according to age, we should 
include Bacon in the same generation with Sidney and Hooker. 
I)Ut we have an eye rather to the dates of the cnniposition of their 
works ; and most of Bacon's works were written after 16 10. 

As the " founder of Inductive Philosojihy," his great reputation 
is literary rather than scientific ; he advanced Science as an advo- 
cate, not as a labourer in the field. He recalle I men from specu- 
lation, and urged them to study facts. He was an eager and acute 
observer, whenever he found time ; but only a fraction of his time 
was devoted to Science. His service lay not so much in what he 
did himself, as in the grand impulse he gave to otliers. 

The merits of his style, as of every other style in that age, are 
variously estimated. Addison praises his grace, Hume calls him 
stiff and rigid, and many persons would be unable to see that 
either of these criticisms has any peculiar application. But a'l 
admit that he is one of the greatest writers of prose during the 
reigns of Elizabeth and James. 

His father. Sir Nicholas Bacon, was Elizabeth's Lord Keeper; 
his mother, Anne Cooke, a woman of Lady Jane Grey accomplish- 
ments, translated Bishop Jewel's 'Apology ' in 1564. Born at his 
father's house in London, Francis was sent at the age of twelve to 
Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained there for two years and 
a half under the care of Whitgift, then ]\laster of Trinity. Of 
these early days little is known, except that he was an exceed- 
ingly grave and [)recociou3 child, and was called by Elizabeth hex 



240 FROM 1610 TO 1640. 

"young Lord Keeper"; it is said, also, that before he left Cam- 
bridge he had begun to dislike Aristotle as being barren of prac- 
tical fruit. Previous to his father's death in 1579, he had spent 
more than two years in 1 aris with the English ambassador there. 
His ideal at this time seems to have been to make statecraft hia 
profession, and reserve a considerable part of his time for study. 
But his father's death leaving him without adequate provision, 
and his uncle Burleigh refusing to find him a sinecure, he was 
compelled to take up the profession of law. He was admitted as 
an utter barrister in 1582 ; and thenceforth his time was distrib- 
uted between the practice of law, public business, and his great 
literary projects. Under Eliziibeth his promotion was not rapid : 
the Queen thought him "showy and not deep" in law; he had 
enemies at Court in his uncle and cousin; and his generous patron, 
Essex, did him more harm than good by indiscreet urgency. He 
got nothing but the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star-Chamber, 
which did not fall in for twenty years ; he applied in vain for the 
Attorney-Generalship, the Solicitor-Generalsliip, and the Master- 
ship of the Rolls. Under James, he became Solicitor-General in 
1607, Attorney-General in 1613, Lord Chancellor in 1617. In 
1620 appeared the 'Novum Organum.' In 162 1 he underwent 
the well-known censure of Parliament, being fined and deprived of 
the Great Seal. The remainder of his life was passed in studious 
retirement, during which he composed the greater part of his 
literary works. In the spring of 1626 he caught a chill when 
experimenting with snow, and died on Easter-day, April 9. 

His chief English works are the ' Essays,' the 'Advancement of 
Learning,' the 'History of Henry VII.,' the 'New Atlantis,' and 
' Sylva Sylvarum.' Of the Essays there were three different issues : 
ten essays in 1597, under the title 'Essays, Religious Meditations, 
Places of persuasion and dissuasion ;' thirty-eight in 16 12, entitled 
' The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, the King's Solicitor- 
General ; ' fifty-eight in 1625, entitled 'The Essays or Counsels, 
Civil and Moral, of,' (fee. The ' Advancement of Learning ' (which 
he translated into Latin, and enlarged during his retirement, call- 
int^ it ' De Augmentis Scientiarum ') was published in 1605. The 
' History of Henry VII.' was his first work after he was banished 
from Court. The 'New Atlantis' was written about the same 
time ; it is a romance somewhat after the manner of More's 
'Utopia,' the design being to describe a college fully equipped for 
the study of Nature on the inductive method. ' Sylva Sylvarum ' 
or the 'Natural History,' — a collection of facts touching the 
qualities of bodies, made jjartly from observation, partly from 
books — was the last work of his life. 

Bacon seems to have been in person a little, broad, square- 



FRANCIS BACON. 241 

shouldered, brown man, thin and nervous-looking. He had a 
large head and small features. 

It would be presumptuous to attempt anything like an exact 
valuation of Bacon's intellectual power. We state only what lies 
upon the surface when we say that the character and products of 
his intellect are very often as much (>ver-e.^timated upon one side 
as they are under-estimated ujioti jinother. He is frequently praised 
as if he had originated and estaMished the inductive nuthod, as if 
he had laid down the canons appealed to in modern science as the 
ultimate conditions of sound induction. This is gomg too far. 
Bacon was an orator, not a worker ; a Tyrtaius, not a ^liltiades. 
He rendered a great service l>y urging recourse to observation and 
experiment rather than to s})eculation ; but neither by precept nor 
by example did he show how to observe and experiment well, or 
so as to arrive at substantial conclusions. Not by precc))t ; for if 
modern inductive method were no better than Bacon's inductive 
method, Macaulay's caricature of the process would not be so very 
unlike the reality. Nor by example ; for the majority of his own 
generalisations are loose to a degree. To call Bacnn the founder of 
scientific method is to mistake the character of his mind, and to 
do him an injustice by resting his fame upon a false foundation. 
Unwearied activit}'', inexhaustible constructiveness — that, and not 
scientific patience or accuracy, was his characteristic. He had 
what Peter Heylin calls "a chymical brain "; every group of facts 
that entered his mind he restlessly threw into new combinations. 
We over-estimate the man upon one side when we give him credit 
for scientific rigour ; his contem[iorary Gilbert, who wrote upon 
the magnet, probably had more scientific caution and accuracy 
than he. And we uuder-cstimate him upon another side when we 
speak as if the Inductive Philosophy had been the only outcome of 
his ever-active brain. His projects of reform in Law were almost 
as vast as his projects of reform in Philosophy. In Politics he 
drew up opinions on every question of importance during the 
forty years of his public life, and was often employed by the 
Queen and Lord Burleigh to write papers of State. All this was 
done in addition to his practical work as a lawyer. And yet his 
multijjlex labours do not seem to have used up his mental vigour ; 
his schemes always outran human powers of performance. His 
ambition was not to make one great finished effort and then rest ; 
his intellectual appetite seemed almost insatiable.^ 

^ It is a curious prohlem to malce out why an intellect so acute and active 
revolted from the subtleties of tlie schoolmen, and did not rather turn to them 
as its most congenial element. Part of the exjilaiiation is doubtless to lie f'oiuid 
in the hitch development of his senses, in the stroni; arrest ot his mind iipou the 
outer world. A meditative man \\\\{ walk loi- niiles tlircugh the country, and 
be unable to describe minutely any one object that he has seen. Bacon's eys 

Q 



242 FROM 1610 TO 1G40. 

In a inan with such prodigious activity of intellect, and such a 
bent towards analysing and classifying dry facts, we do not look 
for much warmth of feeling. He is not likely to S[iend much of 
his time either in imagining objects of tender affection or in doting 
upon actual objects. The world has not yet seen the intellect of a 
Bacon combined with the sentimentality of a Sterne, or the phil- 
anthropy of a Howard. The works of Bacon aflbrd very little b.od 
for ordinary human feelings. All the })leasure we gain from them 
is founded upon their intellectual excellences. Even the similitudes 
are intellectual rather than emotional, ingenious rather than touch- 
ing or poetical. To ada})t an image of Ben Jonson's — the wine of 
Bacon's writings is a dry wine. As we read, we experience the 
pleasure of surmounting obstacles ; we are electrified by unexpected 
analogies, and the sudden revelations of new aspects in familiar 
things ; and we sympathise more or less with the boundless ex- 
hilaration of a mind tliat pierces with ease and swiftness through 
barriers that reduce other minds to torpor and stagnancy. 

Our author says of himself that he s\ as not born " under Jupiter 
that loveth business " ; " the contemplative planet carried him 
away solely." He had not the physical constitution needed to 
bear the worry and fatigue of the actual direction of affairs— not 
to say that he was so engrossed wuth his intellectual projects that 
practical drudgery was intolerably irksome. As Lord Chancellor, 
he cleared off a large accumulation of unheard cases with great 
despatch ; but he jiroved une(]nal to the minuter duties of the 
office, and allowed sub6rdinates to do as they pleased.' 

Opinions. — The following is, a bare outline of Bacon's great 
philosophical project : "The ' Instauratio ' is to be divided into 

prol^ably drank in everything as lie went alone;; or, if not everything, at least 
enough to keep him thinking about external tilings. 

1 So much has been made of certain speciHe cliarges of moral delinquency on 
the part of Baron, that we cannot pass them over without some notice. Atten- 
tive readers will have anticipated our ex]ilanation. Take the case of Essex, 
Essex warmly patronised Bacon, pleaded with the Queen for his preferment, and 
made him a present of an estate. Yet when Essex was charged with treasonable 
practices, Bacon, as one of the Queen's Counsel, took part in the impeachment. 
We cannot enter here into minute casuistry ; but it is easy to see that the im- 
pulsive Essex forced his patronage and his favours upon Bacon, and that Bacon, 
while he feared to discourage such a man's friendship, wa- acutely aware of its 
inconveniences. A man of high honour would have tirndy declined Essex's 
services ; a generous man, who had accepted such services, would have felt 
hound to stand by Essex to the last ; and yet it would hive been inijirudent to 
have acted otherwise than as Bacon acteil. His conduct in the Chancellorship is 
a plainer case. The faults that have been proved against him were faults of 
omission, not of commission. He was enijrossed with his • Novum Organum ' and 
other projects, and closed his eyes to The doings of suliordiiiates. He may even 
have received bribe-nnmey from them vvitliout being at ]iains to in(|uire into the 
particul.ars. We can quite believe his declaration that he never gave judgment 
" with a bribe in his eye." He broke faith, not with justice, but with the givei 
of the bribe. 



FKANCIS BACON. 243 

six portions, of which the first is to contain a general survey of 
the present state of knowledge. In the second, men are to be 
taught how to use their understanding aright in the investigation 
of nature. In the third, all the pheuDniena of the universe are to 
be stored up as in a tieasure-house, as the materials on which the 
new method is to be employed, in the fourth, examples are to be 
given of its operation and of the results to which it leads. The 
fifth is to contain what Bacon had accomplished in natural philo- 
sophy without the aid of his own method, but merely " by what 
may be called common reason. In the sixth part " will be set 
forth the new iihilosophy — the result of the a]>[)lication of the new 
method to all the phenomena of the universe." 

No sketch can here be attempted of his methods of induction. 
They possess little or no scientific value. He had no conception 
of valid proof. His own specnlations are as rash as anything to 
be found in the schoolmen. Thus, among his ' Prerogative In- 
stances ' he lays down that precious stones, diamonds and rubies, 
are fine exudations of stone, just as the gum of trees is a fine 
straining through the wood and bark. He repeats this theory 
in the ' Sylva Sylvarum.' Of the thousand paragraphs in the 
' Sylva ' touching natural phenomena and their causes, there is 
hardly one that does not contain some speculation equally fancifuh 

The opinions contained in his Essays* — observations and pre- 
cepts on man and society — are perhaps the most j)ernianent evi- 
dence of his sagacity. In this field he was thoroughly at home ; 
the study of mankind occu[>ied the largest part of his time. The 
Essays treat of a great variety of subjects — Truth, Death, Dis- 
simulation, Superstition, Plantations, Masks and Triumphs, Beauty, 
Deformity, Vicissitudes of Things. To give any general idea of 
the contents of so many closely-packed pages of solid observation, 
is impossible within our limits. It may be said that to men wish- 
ing to rise in the world by politic management of their fellow- 
men, Bacon's Essays are the best handbook hitherto published. 
His own worldly wisdom was clenched by the significant aphorism, 
" By indignities men come to dignities." 

His opinions in religion have been disputed. We know that 
his mother considered him remiss in the matter of family prayers, 
and in this resjtect not a pattern to his elder brother. But there 
is nothing in his writings at variance with the orthodox faith. It 
has been doubted whether a work called 'The Christian Para- 
doxes ' was written by him ; but if it was, it is only what it pro- 
fesses to be — a paradoxical expression of orthodoxy. He did not, 
as is sometimes stated, deny the argument from final causes. He 

J The second part of tlie title — " Counsels Civil and Moral " is much more 
defcri]itive of the book, but it has been dropped, and would he ditlicult to re- 
vive. The oiigiual ten essays coulained almost nollunj^bu: maxims of pruduuco. 



24 4 FROM 1610 TO 1640. 

only maintained that looking for final causes is a distraction from 
the inves'igation of physical causes. He would seem to have held 
that theology can be founded only on the Bible, and that whatever 
is afhrmed there must be believed implicitly. 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Yorahulary. — Bacon's range of subjects was wide, and his com- 
mand of words within that range as great as any man could have 
acquired. He took pains to keep his vocabulary rich. Fr nn 
some private notes that have been preserved, we see that he had a 
habit of jotting down and refreshing his memory witli varieties of 
expression on ail subjects that were likely to occur for discussion. 

He uses a great many more obsolete words than either Hooker 
or Sidney. To be sure, the language of the feelings and the 
language of theology have changed less than the language of 
science. But in his narrative and in his Essays, as well as in 
his scientific writings, Bacon shows a decided preference now 
and then for " inkhorn terms." In his 'History of King Henry 
VII.' we meet with such words as "habilitate" for qualified^ 
" the brocage of an usurper " for the hails or panderings of an 
usnri)er, " impatrouise liimself of" for moX-e himself patron of, 
"dilficile to" for slow to or univilling to, — and suchlike. How 
archaic the scientific style is may be seen in the following pas- 
sage from the ' Sylva Sylvarum ' — perhaps an extreme case. 
It is headed, " Experiment Solitary touching Change of Aliments 
and Medicines : " — 

" It helpeth both in medicine and aliment, to change and not to continue 
the same medicine and aliment still. The cause is, for that nature, by 
continual use of anything, groweth to a satiety and duNness, either of 
apjietite or working. And we see that assuetude of things hurtful doth 
make thein lose their force to hurt ; as poison which with use some have 
brought themselves to brook. And therefore it is no marvel though things 
helpful, by custom, lose their force to help. I count intermission almost 
the same thing with change ; for that that hath been intermitted is after a 
sort new." 

The plirase " for that " in place of inasmuch as is used so often 
by Bacon as almost to be a mannerism. The frequent use corre- 
sponds to his habit of accounting for things. 

Sentences. — His general structure of sentence, as shown in his 
'Advancement of Learning,' his History, and his occasional dis- 
courses, is less elaborate but more modern than in Hooker's 
average style. His sentences are shorter and more pointed ; and 
being comparatively free from pedantic inversions, have a more 
modern flow. In the placing of qualifying clauses he is less 
awkward. The following period, from his " Discourse in praise of 



FRANCIS BACON. 245 

Elizabeth," if somewhat intricate, is well built, and graduated to 
a climax : — 

"The benefits of Almighty God upon this land, since the time that in 
His singular providi-nce He led as it were liy the liund, and placed in the 
kingdom, His servant, our Queen Elizabeth, are such, as not in boast- 
ing or in conlidence of ourselves, but in praise of His holy name, are 
worthy to be both considered and confessed, yea, and registered in perpetual 
memory." 

The next, from the ' Advancement of Learning,' is an average 
specimen of his long sentence : — 

" And for matter of ]ioHcy and government, that learning should rather 
hurt than enable thereunto, is a thing very improbable : we see it is .ac- 
counted an eiror to commit a natural body to empiiic physicians, which 
commonly have a few pleasing receipts whenujton they are confident and 
adventurous, but know neither the causes of diseases, nor the complexions 
of patients, nor ]ieril of accidents, nor the true method of cures : we see it 
is a like error to rely upon advocates or lawyers, which are only men of 
practice and not grounded in their books, who are many times easily sur- 
prised wlu'u matter f'alleth out besides their exp<^rience, to the prejudice of 
the causes thty handle : so by like reason it cannot be but a matter of doubt- 
ful coiiseipieiiee if states be managed by empiric statesmen, not well mingled 
with men grounded in learning." 

The Essays, particularly the earlier ones, are full of balance and 
point, suiting their character as emphatic aphoristic precepts. The 
Essay on Studies, the first of the original ten, is more than usually 
balanced : — 

" Read not to contradict and confute ; nor to believe and take for granted; 
nor to find talk and discourse ; but to weigh and consider. Some books are 
to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and 
digested ; that is, .some books are to be read only in parts ; others to be 
read, but not curiously; and some few to be 7ead wholly, and with dili- 
gence and attention. . . . Reading makcth a full man ; conference a 
ready man ; and wTiting an exact man. And therefore, if a man write 
little, he had need have a great memory ; if lie confer little, lie had need 
liave a present wit ; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, 
to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise ; poets witty ; 
the mathematics sul)tile ; natural philosophy deep ; moral grave ; logic and 
rhetoric able to contend." 

The following is from his sagacious Essay "Of Negotiat- 
ing " :— 

•' It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter. Letters are 
good, when a man would draw an answer by letter back again ; or when it 
may serve for a man's justification afterwards to produce his own letter; or 
where it may be danger to be interrupted or heard by pieces. To deal in 
person is good, when a man's face breedeth regard, as commonly witli in- 
feriors ; or ill tender cases, where a man's eye upon the countenance of him 
with whom he speaketh may give him a direction how far to go ; and gen- 
erally, wlieu a man will reserve to himself liberty either to disavow or to 
exiioiiud." 



■246 FIJOM 1610 TO 1640. 

Again — 

"All practice is to discover or to work. Men discover themselves in 
tnist, in passion, at unawares, and of necessity, when they would liave 
somewhat done and cannot tind an apt pretext. If you would work any 
man, you nnist either know liis nature and fashions, and so lead him ; or 
his ends, and so persuade him ; or his weukuess and disadvanta^^^es, and so 
awe him ; or those that have interest in him, and so govern him." 

Paragraphs. — In connection with the paragraph may be noticed 
a peculiarity in the composition of the Essays. As a rule, Bacon's 
para^raplis are, comparatively, very good ; he has a sense of 
method and good airangement. In the ' Advancement of Learn- 
ing ' he adheres to a simple sclieme ; and the sentences of separate 
paragraphs are not inconsecutive nor complicated, as Hooker's 
sometimes are. But tlie Essays are of a peculiar structure. 
They are not, nor are they intended to be, consecutive exposi- 
tions ; each is a string of detached reflections and maxims bear- 
ing upon the same subject. The author's intention is more 
apparent in his first edition ; he there distinguishes the transitions 
by the obsolete mark T Thus, in the passage quoted from the 
Essay on Studies, there are four such marks, one at the head of 
each of the four different tacks — showing that lie changed his tack 
advisedly, and not from confusion. 

Figures of Speech — Siriiilitudes. — Bacon's pages are very thickly 
strewn with similitudes. The first edition of the Essays is less 
figurative than the latest edition ; the enlargements of the original 
ten often consist of additional figures. 

That his earlier writings should be less figurative, accords with 
the character of his figures. They axe not elaborated like the 
figures of Jeremy Taylor or Carlyle : his first care was the plain 
expression of his meaning; he made little efiort to obtain simili- 
tudes, but took them rather when they came of themselves. He 
is sometimes spoken of as an imaginative writer; but this is not 
accurate if imagination is held to imply poetical feeling : hia 
imagery is not evoked to gratify any poetical feeling refined or 
unrefined, but partly for purposes of illustration, and partly in the 
exercise of his incontinent quickness to discover analogy. This 
appears the moment we look at any number of his similitudes 
together. They are taken almost exclusively from familiar objects 
and operations in nature and hum:m life. In his narrative their 
number is more within bounds, and they are usually very graphic; 
in the Essays they are often superfluous. 

We shall exemplify his similitudes at some length, as the best 
way of showing tliat they are taken from familiar things, and that 
they are more illustrative than poetical : — 

"For Pope Alexander, finding himself pent and locked up by a league 
and association of the principal States of Italy, that he could not make hia 



FRAIU.US BACON. 247 

way for tl/e advnncemeiit of liis own house (which he immorleratelv thirsted 
alter), was desiruus to truulde the waters in Italy, that he anight ^nh Che 
better. " 

When Plenry was threatened with a Scotch war, a Cornish 
insurrection, and the pretender Perkiu Warbeck all at once, he 
judged it — 

"His best and surest way to keep his strength together in the seat and 
centre of liis kiiigdoni ; aecordiiig to the ancient Indian eiiildeni — in sucdi a 
swilling season, to hold his Iiand upon the middle of the bladder that no aide 
might rise." 

After recounting Henry's fine calculations regarding the action 
of Continental powers, he saj's : — 

" But those things were too line to be fortunate and succeed in all parts ; 
for that (/reat affairs are commonly too rough and stubborn to be wrought upon 
by the finer edges or points of wit." 

The following is the opening sentence of the fragment on Henry 
VIII. :— 

"After the decease of that wise and fortunate king, King Henry the 
Seventh, wlio died in tlie licight of his prosperity, tlieie followed (as useth 
to do when the sun setteth so exceeding clear) one of the fairest mornings of 
a kingdom that hath been known in this land or anywhere else." 

He very often uses these metaphors taken from the phenomena 
of the weather. At the outset of Lis reign, Henry, in his account 
of peace and calms, " did much overcast his fortunes, which proved 
for many years together full of broken seas, tides, and tempests." 
When the King has passed through any of his troubles, it is " fair 
weather" again. The news of Perkin Warbeck's claims "cornea 
thun.lering and blazing" from abroad. So in the Essay on 
Seditions he says that " as there are certain hollow blasts of 
wind, and secret swellings of seas before tempests, so aie there 
in States." Perhaps his most favourite figures are those taken 
from medicine and surgery : he is fond of likening individuals 
and societies to a body, and supposing them subject to disease, 
or operated on by a physician or surgeon. Thus — 

"The King of Scotland laboured under the same disease that King Henry 
did (tliougli more mortal, as it afterwards appeared), that is, discontented 
subjects, apt to rise and raise tumult." 

So with King Henry, insurrection was "almost a fever that took 
liiin every year." In his jiunishment of treason, Henry "com- 
monly drew blood (as physicians do), rather io save life than to 
sjiill it." A good many figures of this kind might be picked from 
the Essays. Thus — 

"It were too long to go over all the particular remedies which learning 
doth minister to all the diseases of the mind — sometimes purging the ill 
humours, sometimes ojiening the obstructions, sometimes helping the diges- 



248 FROM 1610 TO 1640. 

tion, sometimes increasing appetite, sometimes healing the wounds and 
ulcerations thereof, and the like." 

Again, regarding seditions, he says : — 

'* To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evaporate (so 
it be witliout too great insolence or bravery) is a safe way. For he that 
turnt-th the huniours back, and maketh tlie wound bleed inwards, endan- 
gereth malign ulcers and i)ernicious imi>ostliumations." 

His well known figure concerning Truth has a more poetical tone 
than his hgures usually have : — 

"This same Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the 
masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately aud daintily 
as candle-lights." 

This was written after his fall. It is worth noticing that, in these 
latest Essays, both the subjects and the illustrations show a grow- 
ing sense of the pleasures of retirement. 

Other figures than similitudes occur in Bacon's writing. A 
" corrective spice " of antithesis runs through all his works ; some- 
times conducing to clearness and force, sometimes amusing with 
its ingenuity. It is illustrated in extracts under various heads. 
Of the abrupt figures he makes very little use ; his style is too 
grave and sober. At the same time he knows their effect in 
declamation, and introduces them ujjon occasion. See an instance 
at p. 251. 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. — The best evidence of the general intelligibility of 
Bacon's style is that so little has been said about it. He is neither 
markedly Latinised nor markedly familiar ; he is perhaps less 
affected than any of his contemporaries. In his ' Advancement of 
Learning,' addressed to King James, he seems to humour the 
pedantry of the monarch, and introduces not a few Latin quota- 
tions without translatmg them. In his other works there is less 
of this ; there is little obstruction to our getting at his meaning, 
except an occasional technical term. And through all his writings 
the numerous homely and pointed illustrations make his meaning 
abundantly luminous. 

Clearness. — In perspicuity of arrangement, he is much superior 
to any of the Elizabethan writers. To quote the arrangement of 
his ' Novum Organum ' (see p. 243) is hardly pertinent, seeing 
that it was written in Latin ; still, it may be referred to as an 
example of his orderly and simple method. The order of topics in 
the ' Advancement of Learning' is also both simple and free from 
confusion. His classification of the sciences, though deficient as 
a scientific classification for modern purposes, being superseded by 



FRANCIS BACON. 249 

the vast enlargement of the subjects of human knowledge in re- 
cent times, is a very lucid division so far as it goes, :ind as "a 
small globe of the intellectual world " was very serviceable in its 
day. The divisions are so clear, and proceed upon distinctions 
so familiar, that though the subdivision is carried to the eighth 
degree, there is not tlie least perplexity to any mind of ordinary 
education. 

We cannot concede to him the praise of scientific precision ; in- 
deed he often affirms fundamental resemblance where the resem- 
blance is only slender and su[)erticial. Distinctness in the use of 
words was no part of his scheme of philosophical reformation ; the 
confusion of ambiguous terms in science could not begin to be felt 
until science was more advanced. 

Still, ill one of the sulijects that his practical life brought him 
to consider, we find him aware of the danger of loosely applying 
the same term to things not precisely alike. With reference to the 
religious disputes of the time, he objected to the term priest for a 
clergyman ; minister, he said, or presbi/ter, would be better, and 
the term priest should be reserved for the sacrificing priests under 
the old law. 

Apart from rigid exactness. Bacon lias in an eminent degree 
what is called inci.siveness of style ; his words and figures go 
straight to the point. His remarks on Studies are a good example 
of making a statement clear by giving counter-statements. This 
art of style appears in all his writings. True, he often uses the 
" but " of ctintrast where there is no real opposition, and merely 
to indicate a fresh start : nevertheless he does make frequent and 
effective use of contrast for purposes of exact expression. Thus — 

" Tliere followed tliis year, being the second of the Kini,''s reign, a strange 
accident of state, whereof the relations whicli we liave are so naked, as they 
leave it scarce credible ; not for the nature of it (for it hath fallen out oft), 
hut for the manner and circumstance of it, especially in the beginnings." 

ilere we have, in a less finished form, the scrupulosity of qualifi- 
cation that is so marked a feature in the style of De Quincey. 
The following sentence, which is more finished, contains a vividly 
incisive use of contrast : — 

" Neither was the King's nature and customs greatly fit to disperse such 
mists, but contrariwise he had a fashion rather to create doubts than assur- 
ance." 

The passages italicised in the two following contain ingenious 
distinctions clearly expressed : — 

" For the opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want, and the great 
quantity of books maketli a show rather of superfluity than lack ; wliieh 
surcharge nevertheless is not to be remedied by making no more boohs, but by 
maLinij mure good books, which, as the serpent of Moses, might devour tha 
sen enls of the enchanters." 



250 Fi;OM 1610 TO J640. 

Towards removing all hindrances to the pursuit of knowledge, he 
says :-^ 

"The endeavours of a private man may be but as an image in a cross- 
way, that may point at the way, but cannot go it. " 

Strength. — The quality of strength in his style is intellectual 
rather than emotional. In his narrative there is very little expres- 
sion of feeling ; the strength conies chiefly from conciseness, secured 
by comprehensive statement, pregnant metaphor, and occasional 
strokes of epigrammatic condensation. The following is a fair 
specimen of his way of relating events ; in disentangling a variety 
of motives or exhibiting negotiations, he allows himself greater 
amplitude : — 

*' At York there came fresh and more certain advertisement that the Lord 
Lovell was at hand with a great power of men, and that the Stalfords were 
in arms in Worcestersliire, and had made their approaches to tlie city of 
Worcester to assail it. The King, as a prince of grent and profound judg- 
ment, was not much moved with it, for thai he thonL;ht it was but a rag or 
remnant of Bosworth Field, and had nothing in it of the main jiarty of the 
house of York. But lie was more doubtful of the raising of forces to resist 
tlie rebels than of the resistance itself, for that he was in a core of people 
whose affections he suspected. But the action enduring no delay, he did 
speedily levy and send against the Lord Lovell to the number of three thou- 
sand men, ill armed, but well assured (being taken some few out of his own 
train, and the rest out of the tenants and followers of such as were safe to 
be trusted), under the conduct of the Duke of Bedford. And as his numner 
was to send his pardons rather before the sword than after, he gave commis- 
sion to the Duke to proclaim pardon to all that woulil come in, which tlie 
Duke, upon his apjiroach to the Lord Lovell's camp, did perform. And it 
fell out as the King exj)ected; the heralds were the great ordnance." 

The effect of the vigorous expression is enhanced by the pene- 
trating ingenuity and freshness of the thought. We spoke of this 
in our survey of his character. The pleasure of reading him is 
almost purely dependent upon the exercise of the intellect. How 
little gratification he affords to ordinary human feeling will be 
made apparent by a single example. Contrast the following with 
Hooker's manner of approaching a similar theme ; Bacon's subtlety 
is at work to discover arguments where Hooker is lost in adora- 
tion : — 

"First, therefore, let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or 
first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are 
revealed to man, and may be observed with sobriety ; wherein we may not 
seek it by the name of learning ; for all learning is knowledge accjuired, 
and all knowledge in God is original ; and therefore we must look for it by 
another name, that of wisdom or sapience, as the Scriptures call it. 

"It is so, then, that in the work of the creation we see a double emanation 
of virtue from God ; the one referring more properly to power, the other to 
wisdom ; the one exjiressed in making the subsistence of the matter, and 
the other in disposing the beauty of the form. This being supposed, it is to 
be observed that for anything which appeareth in the history of the creation, 



FRANCIS BACON. 2.51 

the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth was made in a moment; 
and the order and disposition of that, chaos or mass was tlie work of six 
days; such a note of dill'eren<-e it pleased God to ]iut upon the works ot 
power and the works of wisdom ; wlier'-with coneurreth tliat in the former 
it is not set down that Go i said, LrL there be heaven and earth, as it is set 
down of tlie works following, but actually that God maile heaven and earih ; 
the one carrying the style of a manufacture, and the other of a law, decree, 
or counstd. 

" To proceed to that which is next in order from God to spirits ; we find 
as far as credit is to be given to tlie celestial hierarchy of that supposed 
Uionysius, the senator of Athens, the first place or degree is given to the 
ang.-ls of love, which are termed seraphim; the second to the angels of 
light, which are termed cherubim ; and the third, and so following places, 
to tiiioiies, principalities, and the rest, which are all angels of power and 
ministry, so as the angels ot knowledge and illumiuatiou are placed before 
the angels of office and domination." 

Tliough not naturally inclined to address the feelings so much 
as the reason, Bacon knew, and upon occasion practised, the arts 
of elevation. The chief English sjiecimen of his more ambitious 
rhetoric is a discourse in praise of the Queen, written when he was 
about thirty. It is a very good examjile of artificial strength. In 
the following sample, the strength is gained chiefly by figures of 
S])eech ])roper, — by declamatory de[>arture from the ordinary forms 
of speech : — 

"To speak of her fortune, that which I did reserve for a garland of hor 
honour ; and that is that she liveth a virgin, and hath no children ; so it is 
that which niaketh all her other virtues and acts more sacred, more august, 
more divine. Let them h'ave children tint leave n • other memory in their 
tinies. Brutoruiu cclcruilas, sobolcs. Revolve in histories the memories of 
hajipy men, and you siiall not find any of rare felicity, but either he died 
childless, or his line spent soon alter his death, or else was unfortunate in 
liis children. Should a man have them to be slain by his vassals, as the 
posthumus of Alexander the Great was ? or to call them his impostliuines, as 
Augustus Cffi.sar called his ? Peruse the catalogue — (Joriielius Sylla, Julius 
C'ajsar, Flavius Vespasianus, Severus, Constautiuus the Great, and nianj 
more." 

It is interesting to compare this forced declamation with the 
ingenious antithetic conceits on the same theme in his Essay on 
Parents and Lhildren : — 

" The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts ; but memory, merit, 
and noble works are proppr to men. Ami surely a man shall see the noblest 
works and fouiulalions have pi-oceeded from childless men, wldch have 
sought to express tlie images of their minds where tliose ot their bodies have 
failed. So the care of jiosterity is most in them that have uo posterity." 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Narrative. — Bacon's 'History of Henry VII.' was written upon 
a ]>rinciple enounced in his ' Advancement of Learning.' After 
saying that histury is of three kinds according as "it representeth 



252 FROM ICIO TO 16-10. 

a time, or a person, or an action," and that " the first we call 
chronicles, the second lives, and the third narrations or relations," 
he goes on — 

" Of these, although the first be the most complete and absolute kind of 
hist'iry, and liath most estimation and ghiry, 3'et tlie second excelletli it in 
profit and use, and the tlurd in verity and sincerity. For the history of 
times representeth the magnitude of actions, and the public faces and 
de[)ortments of persons, an(l passeth over in silence the smaller passages and 
motions if mc7i and matters. . But such being the workmanship of God, 
as He doth hang the greatest weitxht upon the smallest wires, maxima e 
minimis siifpendcns, it comes therefore to pass that such histories do rather 
net forth the }iomp of business than the true and inward resorts thereof. But 
lives, if they be well writ: en, propounding to themselves a person to repre- 
sent, in whom actions botli greater and smaller, public and jirivate, have 
a commixture, must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively 
representation." 

This ideal of history bears some resemblance to Carlyle's anti- 
Dryasdust views. Bacon, a more acute and dispassionate observer 
than the historian of Friedrich, and practically acquainted with 
the ends and expedients of kings, has left us what is probably the 
very best history of its kind. He wrote it in a few months, 
taking his facts from the Chroniclers, and having access to few, if* 
any, original documents ; and consequently its peculiar merit is 
not accuracy : still, even if it is taken on chat ground, his sagacity 
and knowledge of state affairs proved so true a guide, that his 
views of the main actions have not been set aside by more patient 
investigators. Considered on its own claims as an explanation of 
events by reference to the feelings and jnirposes of the chief actor, 
it is perhaps a better model than any history that has been pub- 
lished since. "He gives," says Bishop Nicholson, "as si)rightly a 
view of the secrets of Henry's Council as if he had been President 
of it." 

In one respect Bacon's History is in strong contrast to ]\Iacau- 
lay's. In relating the schemes and actions of such a king as 
Henry, Macaulay would have overlaid the narrative with strong 
expressions of approval or disapproval. Bacon writes calmly, 
narrating facts and motives without any comment of a nioial 
nature. Sometimes, indeed, he criticises, but it is from the point 
of view of a politician, not of a moralist ; a piece of cruelty or 
perfidy is either censured only as being injudicious, or not com- 
mented u|)()n at all. On this ground he is visited with a sonorous 
declamation by Sir James Mackintosh — as if his not improving 
the occasion were a sign that he approved of what had been done. 
Bacon wrote upon a principle that is beginning to be pretty 
widely accepted as regards personal histories cliiming to be im- 
jiartial — namely, that " it is the true office of history to represent 
the events themselves tofrether with the counsels, and to leave the 



FRANCIS BACON. 253 

observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty 
of every man's judgment." He does not seel? to seal up historical 
facts from the useful othce of "pointing a moral"; he only held 
that the moralising should not interfere with the narrative. 

Exposition. — We have said that the modern expositor has not 
much to learn from earlier writers. An exception in one respect 
may be claimed for Bacon. Though all his scientific matter has 
been superseded, and his style is now antiquated, the 'Advance- 
ment of Learning' might still lie read as a general tonic for inci- 
sive expression and perspicuous method. At the same time, it 
would be a mistake for the student to go to Bacon before he had 
in some degree mastered the style of modern exposition. To read 
the productions of Bacon's vigorous and subtle intellect has a 
bracing influence, but we must first be confirmed against the 
affectation of trying to imitate. 

The ' Sylva Sylvarum ' has little value as regards expository 
style, being merely a record of experiments and observations, wiih 
speculations thereupon. The following on "the goodness and 
choice of waters" is an example of the style ; it also illustrates the 
scientific worthlessness of many of his statements : — 

" It is a tiling of very ^ond use to discover the {goodness of waters. Tlie 
taste, to those tliat drink water only, is soniewlmt : but other exi'erimcnts 
are more sure. First, try waters by weight ; wherein you may find some 
difference, though not much ; and tlie lighter you may account the 
better. . . . 

"Sixthly, you may make a judgment of waters according to the place 
whence they spring or come. Tiie lainwater is by the phy.sicians esteemed 
the finest and tlie best ; but yet it is said to putrefy soonest, which is likely 
becavise of the fineness ot tlie spirit ; and in conservatories of" rain-water 
(such as they have in Venice, &.c.) they are found not so choice waters ; the 
worse perha]is because they are covered aloft, and kejit from the sun. 
Snow-water is held unwholesome ; insoniucli as the people that dwell at 
the foot of the snow-mountains or otherwise upon the ascent (especially the 
women), by drinking of snow-water, have great bags under their throats. 
Well-water, except it be upon chalk, or a very plentiful spring, maketh 
neat red, which is an ill sign. Springs on the toji of high hills are the 
best ; for both they seem to have a lightness and appetite of mounting ; 
and besides, they are most pure and unmiiigled ; and again are more j)er- 
colated through a, great space of earth. For waters in valleys join in eli'eet 
underground with all waters of the s;ime level ; whereas springs on the tops 
of hills pass through a great deal of pure earth with less mixture of other 
waters. " 

Persuasion. — His power as an orator is attested by two eminent 
authorities. Sir Walter Raleigh says that he surpassed other men 
in s])eaking as much as he did in writing ; and Ben Jonson, in his 
'Discoveries,' affirms that — "His hearers could not cough or look 
aside from him without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and 
had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. No man had 
their affections more in his power." Making every allowance for 



254 FROM 1610 TO 1640. 

grateful exaggeration in Ben Jonson's eulogy, we can still believe 
that Bacon was indeed a very convincing speaker. He wa.s not a 
dsclaimer ; he would not seem to have spoken with heat and fer- 
vour : if we raise upon Ben Jonson's description a picture of a 
hushed audience listening to a glowing oral or, we shall be very far 
from the probable reality. A studied orator, he affected gravity 
and weight ; speaking " leisurely, and rather drawingly than 
hastily," on the principle that "a slow speech confirmeth the 
memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a 
seemliness of speech and countenance." From all that we know, 
it seems unmistakable that he addressed chiefly the self-interest 
and confirmed passions of his audience. The main study of his 
life was how to " work " men. 

His verbal ingenuity was great, and carefully cultivated. Under 
the title of ' Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' Mr Spedding 
has published some specimens of his store of happy expressions, 
repartees, epigrams, quotations from all scources, laid up for use 
upon fitting occasions. His collection of apothegms was another 
part of the same elaborate pre{)aration. In his preface he says : 
" Certainly they are of excellent use. They are mucrones verbomm, 
pointed speeches. Cicero prettily calls them salinas, salt-pits ; that 
you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle it where you will. They 
serve to be interlaced in continued speech. They serve to be re- 
cited upon occasion of themselves. They serve if you take out 
the kernel of them, and make them your own." 

Another of his studies for Persuasion appears in a fragment first 
published in 1597, entitled 'Of the Colours of Good and Evil,' or, 
more fully, ' A Table of Colours or Appearances of Good and Evil, 
and their Degrees, as places of Persuasion and Dissuasion, and 
their several Fallaxes and the Elenches of them.' In the begin- 
ning he says that " the persuader's labour is to make things appear 
good or evil, and that in higher or lower degree ; which as it may 
be performed by true and solid reasons, so it may be represented 
also by colours, po[)ularities, and circumstances, which are of such 
force, as they sway the ordinary judgment either of a weak man, 
or of a wise man not fully and considerately attending and ponder- 
ing the matter. One of these " Colours " may be quoted as an 
example of his ingenuity : he hiuiself would probably have been 
prepared to use and enforce either side according as he found it 
necessary : — 

" That coiirse vihich keeps the matter in a man's potrer is good ; (hat which 
leaves him wilhout retreat is lad ; for to have no means of retreating is to be 
in a sort poioerlcss ; and power is a good thing. 

" Appertaining to this persuasion, the forms are, you shall engage yourself; 
on tlie other Hide, tantuin quantum voles sumcs ex fortuna, &c. — you shall 



DIVINES UXPER JAMES. 5J55 

keep the matter in your own limuls. The repreliension of it is, that procr-rd- 
intj and resolving in all aciiuns is nrccssary ; ior as lie saith well, twI to 
resolve i\ to resolve; and many times it lirecds as many necessities, and 
engaLceth as far in some other sort, as to n^solve. 

" So it is hut the covetous man's di.^ease translated into power ; for the 
covetous man will eiijoj' nothing, because he will have his full stoie and 
possiliility to enjoy more ; so by this reason a man should execute nothing, 
because he should be still indifferent and at lilierty to execute anything. 
Besides necessity and this sanm jnc/a est aica " ["tlie die is cast"] "hath 
nuuiy times an advantage, because it awaketli the powers of the mind, and 
strengtheneth endeavour. " 



OTHER WRITERS. 

Divines under Jainies. — During the reign of James the Puri- 
tans gave little trouble. Forbearing open controversy, they gained 
ground among the people by their exemplary lives, and left the 
literary champions of conformity to other employment. Richard 
Field, 1561-1616, celebrated at Oxfoid as a disputant, and a fa- 
vourite royal chaplain under James, wrote a treatise to prove that 
the English Church was the Church of early Christianity, and that 
the Roman Catholic peculiarities were of modern origin. His style 
is periodic and sonorous, without containing unidiomatic inver- 
sions. He argues with considerable vigour, and occasionally 
warms into impressive declamation. Lancelot Andrewes, 1555- 
1626, Bishop of Winchester, and a Privy Councillor, was a man of 
greater vivacity. He was a favourite with I'acon, who records 
some of his witty apothegms. As a bishop he was hos|)itable 
and munificent. He was celebrated for his knowledge of lan- 
guages. The fact that he Mas the most popular i)reacher at 
Court, both with Elizabeth and with James, shows us whence tlie 
fashions of cumbrously superfluous quotation and fanciful word-play 
came into the sermon- writing of this and the following period. 
In redundant display of learning he goes beyond even .Jeremy 
Taylor ; and his word-play is after the manner we have illustrated 
from Ascham and Lyly. Bishop Morton, 1584-1659, a descendant 
from Cardinal Morton, was a voluminous author, chiefly of con- 
troversial works; but the length, abstemiousness, and kin lly 
generosity of his life, and the troubles of his later years, will do 
more to preserve his memory than genius either in thought or 
expression. John Donne, 1573-1631, the founder of the " ]Mcta- 
physical " school of poetry, having ruined his prospects of advance- 
ment in secular office by an imprudent marriage, after some ten 
years' uneasy waiting for employment, was urged by King James 
to enter the Church, and was ordained in i6i6. As comjtared with 
Andrewes, Donne has the same characteristics of excessive quo- 
tation and fanciful wit ; still the two are very different. For one 
thing, though that is not so striking, they draw their quotationg 



256 FROM 1(!1() TO 1640. 

from different sources : Donne is specially read in the Latin 
classics. They differ chiefly in force of intellect. Donne is more 
powerful and original ; divides and distinguishes with greater 
subtlety, and fetches his images from a greater distance. In 
Donne's sermons, an intellectual epicure not too fastidious to read 
sermons will find a delicious feast. Whether these sermons can 
be taken as patterns by tlie modern preacher is another affair. It 
will not be contended that any congregation is equal to the effort 
of following iiis subtleties. In short, as exercises in al)stract 
subtlety, fanciful ingenuity, and scholarship, the sermons are 
admirable. Judged by the first rule of popular exposition, the 
style is bad — a bewildering maze to the ordinary reader, much 
more to the ordinary hearer. In the specimens that we quote 
there is no want of distinct order, but the expression is in the 
highest degree abstract and subtle. They are taken from a sermon 
on St Paul at iSlalta, the text being, " They changed their minds, 
and said that he was a god " : — 

"The first words of our text carry us necessarily so far back as to see 
from what they chaiifjed ; and their periods are easily seen : their terminus 
a quo and their tcrvdnus ad qicem, wVre these ; first that he was a murderer, 
then that he was a god. An error in morality ; they censure deeply upon 
light evidence: an error in divinit)' ; they trunsf'er the name and estimation 
of a god upim an unknown man. Phice both the errors in divinity (so you 
ma}' justly do) ; and then tliere is asi en-or in chaiity, a hasty and incon- 
siderate condemning; and an error in taith, a supeisiitious crediting of an 
imaginary god. Now upon these two general considerations will this exer- 
cise consist ; first that it is natural lo,i:ii', an a'-gumentation naturally im- 
printed in man, to argue, and conclude thus: Great calamities are inflicted, 
therefore God is greatly provoked. These men of Jlalta were but natural 
men, but baibarians (as S. Luke calls them), and yet they argue and con- 
clude so : Here is a judgment exei'Uted, therefore here is evidence that God 
is displeased. And so far they kept within the limits of humanity and 
piety too. But wlien they descended hastily and inconsiderately to partic- 
ular and personal applications, — This judgment upon this man is an evi- 
dence of his guiltiness in this offence, then they transgressed the boun'ls of 
charity ; that because a viper had seized Paul's hand, therefore Paul must 
needs be a murderer. 

" So that for this doctrine " (the natural " argumentation " above spoken 
of) " a man needs not be preached unto, a man needs not be catechist-d ; a 
man needs not read the fatheis, nor the councils, nor the schoolmen, nor 
the ecclesiastical story, nor summists, nor casuists, nor canonists ; no nor 
the Pdhle itself for this doctrine; fur this doctrine, that when God strikes 
He is angry, and when He is angry He strikes, the natural man hath as lull 
a library in his bosom as the Christian. 

" The same author of ours, Moses, tells us, ' The Lord our God is Lord of 
lords, and God of gods, and regardeth no man's person.' The natural man 
hath his author too, that tells him, Semper virglufsftirice, — the fr.ries (they 
whom they conceive to execute revenge u])on malefactors) are always virgins, 
that i.s, not to be corrupted by any solieitatious. That no dignity shelters a 



DIVINES UNDER CUAIILES I. 2.')7 

man from the justice of Gnd, is a natural conolnsion, as well as a divine. 
We have a .sweet singer of Israel tliar, tells us, A'o/i diwiiUnhit dies, ' Tlie 
bloody and deeeitfiil man shall not live out half his days' ; and 'lie natural 
man hath his sweet sinj/er too, a learned poet, that tells him. that seldom 
any enormous malelactor enjoys siccam mortem (as he calls it\ a drv, an un- 
bloody death. That blood re([uires blood is a Uiitural conilusion as widl as 
a divine. Our sweet singer tells us again, that if he fly to the farthest ends 
of the earth, or to the sea, or to heaven, or to hell, he shall find God there; 
and the natural man hath his author that tells him, Qiii/ugH, non effiupt, he 
that runs away from God does nut scape God. That there is no sanctuary, 
no jirivileged place, against which God's Quo Warrnnlo docs not lie, is a 
natural conclusion as well as a divine. Sanguis Abel., is our proverb, that 
Abel's blood cries fur revenge; and Sanguis ^'Esojii is the natural man's 
proverb, that Esop's blood cries for revenge ; for Esop's blood," &c. 

Besiiles his Sermons, Donne's most famous prose work is 
' Biathanatos,' a treatise on Suicide. 

Divines under Charles I. — Joseph Hall, 1574-1656, is illua- 
trious in the Church history of England cliieliy throiiirh lii.s efforts 
to reconcile Dissenters with the Established Church. Though 
professedly anxious for religious union, he was a stanch adherent 
to Epi.scopacy, and wrote in its defence against both Presbyterian- 
ism and liomanism. His literary career extends through nearly 
sixty years. His first work consi.'^ted of three books of 'Satires,' 
published in 1597, and other three published tiie firllowing year — • 
performances wliicli are praised even by such an authori:y as Pope. 
In i6o8-ii he i)ubli.shed his ' Epistles.' 1 His best-known prose 
works are his 'Contemplations' on Scripture, often qitottd in 
popular commentaries, and his 'Occasional .Meditation.s,' one of 
his latest productions. Both as a writer and as a jjreacher his 
reputation stands high. With less scliolarshi^ and wit than An- 
drewes, and less original power than Donne or Taylor, he writes 
with groat fltiency and energy, and with much better taste than 
any of these writers. Some have called him the best preachei 
of that century — no small honour among such giants ; and un- 
doubtedly, for pulpit oratory, his strong feelings and fluent ex 
pre.ssion, guided by superior taste, woidd be more effective thai* 
the undisciplined profusion and oiiginality of his great rivals. 
Certainly, though he had not the genius of Donne or Taylor, lie is 
a man of great maik in the history of our literature. The variety 
as well as the power of his writings challenges attention. Over 
and above his voluminous works connected with religion, he claims 
to be the fiist English Satirist, the first English writer of Epistles^ 

1 These Epistles are sometimes said to be the first cidlection of " letters" in 
the Englisli language. Such a statement involves a sligiu. contusion of names. 
Hall's Epistles are not " letters " at all in the sen.se of correspoiide ,ce on pa.s.s- 
iiig events, hut are really moral and religions (li.-.cu~sions in tlie e| istolary form. 
To prevent coulusiou, they had better be allowed to keep their title ot ' Episties.' 

B 



258 FPtOM 1610 TO 1640. 

and his ' Mundus Alter et Idem ' (Another World yet the Same) is 
said (though that is disputed) to have furnished Swift with the 
idea of ' Gulliver's Travels.' ^ 

The character and opinions of the " immortal Chillingwortb," 
1602-1644, attiact interest ; his style is as finished, clear, and 
vigorous as any that was written in his day ; and he argues with 
great force. He was a distinguished student at Oxford, a versatile 
scholar, eminent both in mathematics and in poetry, and noted for 
the confident independence of his views, and fearlessness in assert- 
ing and acting up to them. His patron was Laud, and it needed 
no little policy to keep so erratic and independent a genius in the 
orthodox track. He was first iiained over by the Roman Catholics ; 
and when regained, he refused to sign the Church formulas, con- 
senting only wjien it was urged that they were merely bonds of 
peace and union, and that subscription did not imply belief of the 
whole. At the siege of Gloucester, he showed his versatility by 
pioposing certain siege engines on a Roman model. Before the 
King at Oxford, he boldly attacked the vices of the Cavaliers. 
His chief work is ' The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Sal- 
vation.' itc, 1637. It is arem:irkably bold and liberal book. He is 
not tied down to his own Church ; by the " religion of Protestants" 
he understands neither "the doctrine of Luther, or Calvin, or 
j\Ielaiichthon ; nor the C<mfession of Augusta, or Geneva ; nor the 
Catechism of Heidelberg, nor the Articles of the Church of Eng- 
land — no, nor the harmony of Protestant Confessions," but "the 
Bible, and the Bible only." His work is undoubtedly the germ 
of Taylor's 'Liberty of Prophesying,' published ten years later; 
and it breathes a still bolder and wider spirit of tolerance : — 

" I see yilaiiily, and witli mine own e3'es, that there are Popes against 
Popes, cmnieils against councils, some fathers against others, the same 
failiers against tliemselves, a consent of fathers of one age agiiiist a consent 
of fatliers of another age, the Church of one age against the Church of 
another age. . . . In a woril, there is no sufficient certainty hut of 
Scripture only for any considering man to huild upon. . . , Propose 
me anything out of this Bo(jk, and re([uire whetlier I believe or no, and 
seem it never so incomprehensible to linnian reason, I will subscribe it 
with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than 
this. God hath said so, therefore it is true. In otiier things I will t.ike 
no man's liberty of judgment from liiin ; neither shall any man take mine 
from me. 1 will thuik no man the worse man nor the worse Christian: 
I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me. , . . 
I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore that men onght not 
to require any more of any man than this, to believe the Scripture to be 

' Like other writers of the time, he has his pedantic nickname. Sir Henry 
Wottou calli'd him tlie Eni^lish Seneca, probably because he wrote Satires, 
Epistles, and Moral Essays. Fuller says — " He was commonly called our 
English Seneca, for the pui-eness, plainness, and fulness of his style ; not ill at 
controversies, more happy at conimeuts, very good in characters, best of al) in 
meditatiaus." 



IIISTOUY. 259 

God's Word, to endeavour to find the true sense of it, ;ind to live according 
to it." 

The " ever-memnrable John Hales," 1584-1656, Avas before even 
Cliillingworth in advocating tolenmce. In his tract on " Schism 
and Scliismatics," published in 1628, he boldly asserted that 
"Church authority is none." The chief |iublic incident in hi.s 
life was his at endance at the Synod of Dort, 1618-19; his letters 
written at the time contain perhai)s the best account of its pro- 
ceedings. He wrote little : some of his sermons and tracts were 
collected into a volume in 1659, after his death. He was a little 
man with "a most ingenuous countenance, sanguine, cheerful, and 
full of air." He hal a high reputation for learning, wit, and 
courteous manner. His style is simple and felicitous. 

HISTORY. 

This period very nearly saw the end of the last of the Chron- 
iclers, Sir Richard Baker, 1568-1645, whose work, ' A Chronicle 
of the Kings of England, from the Time of the Piomans' Cov- 
ernnient unto the Dfath of King James,' was published in 1641. 
Baker's name, though not his fame, has been kept alive by his 
connection with Sir Roger de Coverley in the ' Spectator ' : 
Addison, ridiculing the simple ignorance of the Tory squires in 
the person of Sir Roger, makes him quote Sir Richard Raker as 
a great authority. Poor Sir Richard is visited quite as bitterly 
as his rustic admirer : — 

"TI\e jrlorious names of Henry tlie Fifth and Queen Elizabeth gave the 
Knight great opportunitips ot shining, and of doing justice to Sir Richard 
Baker, icJio, as our Knight observed with some suyprise, had a great many 
kings in him whose monuments he had nut seen in the Abhcij. " 

Baker's popularity with country gentlemen was probably due 
to his style, which is praised by such an authority as Sir Henry 
Wotton — "full of sweet raptures and researching conceits, nothing 
borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all glowing with a certain equal 
facility." 

Two antiquaries survived from the illustrious knot of King 
James's reign thmugli the whole of this generation and far into 
the next. James Usher or Ussher, Archbishop of Arn)agh, 
1 581-1656, and John Selden, lawyer and pnlitician, Keeper of 
the Records in the Tower, 1584 1654, were intimate with Camden, 
Spelman, and Cotton. Both were men of some fortune : Usher 
inherited a goo-1 estate, but retained only a com])etency, resigning 
the rest to his brother ; and Selden, having a lucrative practice as 
a consulting lawyer and a conveyancer, jiossessed, as Fuller said, 
"a number of coins of the Roman Emperors, and a good many 
more of the later English Kings." Their principal antiquarian 



2 GO FliOM 1(310 TO 1640. 

Avorks are in Latin. Usher is an authority in chronological 
matters: his ' Annales ' (1650-54) settles the Chronology of 
Ancient Histnry from the Creation to the Dispersion of the 
Jews. He wrote also voluuiiudusl)' on Church Antiquities. 
Further, he was a royalist, and wrote a denunciation of armed 
resistance to the King; this was not published till after his 
death. Sermons and Letters were also published posthumously. 
— Selden was an antiquary of more varied accomplishments, 
writing on the administration of ]>ritain, international law, the 
le.ual antiquities of the Jews, the gods of Syria, the Arundel 
Marbles, old English Ballads, &c. In politics, both of State 
and of Church, he was opposed to Usher; his legal learning 
and skill are said to have been of service in the protestation 
against James, and in the Petition of Kight against Charles. 
A cautious man, he held back from public business when his 
party went to an extreme. Seklen's learning, prudence, and 
polite affalile manner, made him perhai)s the most generally 
respected man of his time — resjiected alike by Royalist and by 
Puritan. As a writer of English, he is known by' his ' History 
of Tithes' (1618), which offended the clergy by denying their 
divine right to such revenue; but chiefly iDy his 'Table-Talk,' 
published after his death. The style of his writings is harsh, 
obscure, and antiquated ; in conversation he seems to have been 
more felicitous, dealing in pointed sententious aphorisms and 
witty turns. The 'Table-Talk' is full of worldly wisdom and 
sarcasms against clerical bigotry. 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1581-1648, a high-minded dijilo- 
matist, known in philosophy as the author of a Latin deislical 
treatise, ' De Veritate,' wrote a history of the Life and Reign 
of King Henry VIIL Those that differ from Lord Herbert most 
widely, join in admiring the dignity and earnestness of his char- 
acter. His history may be put side by side with Lord Bacon'u 
'History of Henry Vll.,' as one of the best historical works 
published before 1660. His style is not so clear, flowing, and 
pointed as Bacon's, but the idiom is purer. His sagacity in the 
exi)lanation of affairs is no less remarkable, and he is at greater 
pains to make sure of the facts. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

"Rare" Ben Jonson (1574-1637), wrote a prose work entitled 
'Timber; or, Discoveries made on Man and Matter' — a series 
of random jottings on various subjects, containing some very 
sensilde literary criticism. He does not affect the abrupt dis- 
continuous style of I'acon's Essays; he writes rather in a free 
and easy conversational style. The following are specimens of 
hia literary notes : — 



MISCELLANEOUS WEITERS. 261 

"And as it is fit to read the best authors to youth first, so let them be ot 
the ojK'iiest and clearest. As Livy bi'fore Sallust, Sidney before Donne : 
and beware of h'tting them taste Gower or Chaucer at first, lest falling too 
much in love witli antiquity, and not apprehending the weiglit, they grow 
rough and barren in language only." 

" Periods are beautiful when they are not too long : for so they have their 
strength too, as in a pike or javelin." 

The following is partly an anticipation of Carlyle's metaphor 
about a plethoric style : — 

"We say it is a fleshy style when there is much periphrasis and circuit 
of words : and when with more than enough, it grows latand corpulent. It 
hath blood and juice when the words are proper and ajit, their sound sweet, 
and the phrase ueal and i)acked." 

His criticism of Shakspeare is often quoted, almost always 
without the qualification, and too often as an evidence of Ben's 
jealousy : — 

" I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shak- 
speare, that, in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he nevei- blotted out a 
line. My answer has always been, Would he had blotted out a thousand. 
"Wliich they thought a malevolent sj eech. 1 had not told ]iosterity this but 
for tlieir ignorance who cho.se that ciicumstance to commend their friend 
by, wlieiein he most faulted ; and to justify mine own candour : for I 
loved the man, and do honour his memory on tliis side idolatry, as much 
as any." 

In the ' Pieliquine Wottonianee,' the remains of Sir Henry 
Wotton (1568-1639), — a wit of more poli.sh than Overbury, 
King James's favourite diplomat i.st, and author of the definition 
of an ambassador as " an honest man sent to lie abroad for the 
good of his country " — we find a weighty balance of sentence 
almost as finished as Johnson's. The following is a sample : — 

"Sometimes the possibility of preferment prevailing with the credulous, 
expectation of less expense with the covetous, opinion of ease with the 
fond, and assurance of remoteness with the unkind parents, have moved 
them, without discretion, to engage their children in adventures of learn- 
ing, by whose return they have received but small contentment : but they 
who are de<'eived in their first designs deserve less to be condemned, as 
such who, after sutlicient trial, persist iu their wilfulness are noway to be 
liilied." 

The use of the abstract noun makes the resemblance to the 
Johnsonian structure all the more complete. Here is another 
specimen : — 

" Tl:e fasliion of commending our friends' abilities before they come to 
trial sometimes takes good etfeet with the common sort, who, buildiiig their 
beliel on anthority, strive to follow the conceit of their hetters ; bnt usually, 
amongst nien of independent judgments, this besjieaking of opinion breeds 
a purpose of stricter exandnation, and if the report be answered, procures 
only a bare acknowledgment, whereas," &c. 



262 FliOM 1610 TO 1040. 

Among the miscellaneous writers of the period may be men- 
tioned two travellers : George Sandys (1577-1643), son of Arch- 
bishop Sandys, translator of Ovid, and author of a book of 
'Travels in the East' (1615); and William Lithgow (d. 1640), a 
Scotsman, who, during the reign of James, spent nineteen years 
in walking through " the most famous kingdoms in Europe, Asia, 
and Africa." Sandys was an acc(miplished traveller, with a con- 
stant eye to literary effect; his 'Travels' went through many 
editions. Lithgow seems to have walked more for adventure, 
and for the pleasure of boasting how many places he had visited, 
and how many miles he had walked on foot. 

We must also mention the author of the 'Anatomy of Melan- 
choly,' the recluse student of Christ Church, Oxford, Eobert Bur- 
ton (1576-1640). A grave dyspeptic man, and a great reader — • 
" confusedly tumbling over divers authors in o\Tr libraries,' with 
small profit for want of art, order, memory, judgment " — he Avas 
eccentric and original, and picked out of various authors an enor- 
mous mass of quotations suiting his peculiar moods. With an 
immense parade of divisions and subdivisions, there is no method 
in his book ; the heading of a section is little clue to its contents. 
His enumeration of the acts characteristic of different forms of 
melancholy is wide enough to include every son of Adam in the 
category of gloom. The leading features of his style, if style it 
may lie called, are profuse quotation — several authorities V)eing 
quoted for the most trivial remark — and long strings of particular 
words by way of exhausting a general subject, poured out in suc- 
cessive sentences without break. Part of his account of himself 
may be quoted as a sample : — 

" I am not poor, I am not rich ; nihil est, nihil deest, I have nothing, I 
want nothing : all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greatt-r preferment 
as I could never get, so am I not in debt for it, I have a comiietence (laus 
Deo) from my noble and munificent patrons, though I live still a collegiate 
student, as Democritns in liis garden, and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi 
thentrum, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, Et tan- 
quam in specula positus (as he said) in some high place above you all, like 
Stoicus Sapiens, omnia saicula, prsetei'ita praisentiaque videns, uno velul 
iiUiulu. ... A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, 
and how they act their parts, wliich methinks are diversely presented unto 
me as trom a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and 
those ordinary rumours of WiU', plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, 
massacres, niete.irs, comets, spectrums. prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, 
cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Polaml, &c., daily mus- 
ters and preparations and suchlike, whicli tliese tempestuous times afford, 
battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shi[)wrecks," &c. 

The enumeration would stretch on through one of our pages. 
To the modern writer Burton is of use only as a quarry, and to 
this purpose he has been turned by many. Sterne is not the only 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 263 

writer that has used the ' Anatomy of Melancholy * as raw material. 
'J'he passage we have quoted is probably the germ of Steele and 
Addison's ' Spectator.' 

Nathaniel Butter, bookseller and pamphleteer, is a personage 
of some importance, as being the father of newspapers. It used 
to be supposed that the 'English Mercury' of 1588 was the first 
of English printed newsi)apers, but it is proved to have been a 
forgery of later date. During the reign of Elizabeth annual sum- 
maries of the chief events u])on the Continent were printed under 
the title of ' Gallo-Belgici.' The proceedings of Continental |)o\ver3 
were always interesting, and letters from friends in London con- 
taining the latest news were eagerly passed from hand to hand. 
When the Thirty Years' War broke out, this interest may lie sup- 
posed to have greatly increased ; and ex[)iess newsdetters, written 
by booksellers and others to their customers in the provinces, were 
much in request. These occasional productions may sometimes 
have been printed. Butter is the first known author of a regular 
series of such printed papers of news ; in 1622 he began the 
' Weekly News,' which he "purposed to continue weekly liy God's 
assistance, from the best and most certain intelligence." " Who- 
soever," he said, "will be cunning in the places and persons of 
Germany, and understand her wars, let him not despise my Coran- 
toes." His " corantoes," or courants, however, were despised, and 
that intensely, by the wits of the, period. There may have been 
no guile in Nathaniel himself, but his imitators and rivals, who 
soon became numerous, seem to have published letters from "an 
eminent Jew merchant in Germany," and other correspondents of 
doubtful authenticity. And Ben Jonson did not scruple to declare 
that their pamphlets of news were " made all at home, and no 
syllable of truth in them." The unfortunate name of Butter made 
him an inviting butt. Jons(m called him the "butter-box," de- 
scribed his news as " rank Irish butter " ; and Fletcher made one 
of his characters say that " the spirit of Butter shall look as if 
butter would not melt in his mouth." The hostility of the stage 
may have been partly roused by the dramatic criticisms of these 
embryonic joirrnalists. Despite his name, Butter seems to have 
been an industrious and veracious man, and not by any means the 
fantastic liar that has been represented by the dramatists.^ 

i See Comhill Magazine, July 1868. 



CHAPTER IV. 



FEOM 1640 TO 1670. 



THOMAS FULLER, 

1608— 1661. 

In the exciting days of the first Charles and of the Common- 
wealth, the life even of a clergyman was subject to danger and 
adventure, if he hajipened to be a partisan. Fuller, the son of 
the Rector of All Winkle, in Northamptonshire, bred up in the 
usual course of school and college education, and appointed pre- 
bend of Salisbury and vicar of Jiroad Windsor at the age of twenty- 
three, spent the first thirty-three years of his life in the greatest 
imaginable freedom from care. Up to 1640 he was unmolested in 
his quiet existence — varying his parish duties with the literary 
plans that served to fill ids hours of leisure. But by 1640 the 
political atmosphere became troubled ; and Fuller was called from 
his retreat to uphold in the pulpits of the metropolis the duty of 
obedience to the King. He spent a year with the royal forces in 
the character of chaplain to Lord Hopton. Growing weary of this 
irregular life, in 1644 he withdrew to Exeter, and busied himself 
with his compositions. On the capitulation of Exeter, he removed 
to London. In 1655 he received from the Protector special per- 
mission to preach. He lived to see the llestoration, but did not 
long enjoy the reward given to his loyalty, dying on the 15th of 
August 1 66 1. 

His ' Holy War,' the first of his works, was written in the quiet 
of the parsonage at Broad Windsor. His other works ^ he com- 

1 The list of his principal works is as follow: 'History of the Holy War,' 
1640 ; 'The Holy State,' 1642 ; 'Good 'l"lioui,'ht.s in Bad Tiiiies,' 1644-45 '< "^'''6 
Prolaue blate,' 1648; 'Good Thoughts iu Worse Times,' 1649; 'A I'isgs U Sight 



THOMAS FULLEu. 265 

posed when his life was more unsettled ; though during the excite- 
ment of the Civil War his energies were so far from being absorbed 
in the struggle, that he was quietly occupied in collecting materials 
for his ' VVorthies,' and in laying up a heterogeneous store of 
anecdotes. 

In person! Fuller seems to have been rather over the middle 
height, full-bodied, with light curling hair, florid complexion, and 
clear blue eyes. He had an erect easy carriage, as was natural in 
a man of confident goo 1 spirits. He \\as careless in his dress. 

He had an astonishing memory. The anecdotes of his powers 
are probably, like all anecdotes of the kind, not a little over- 
coloured ; still they show what an impression he made on those 
that knew him. " It is said that he could rei)eat five hundred 
strange words after twice hearing, and could make use of a sermon 
verbatim if he once heard it. He undertook once, in passing to 
and fro from Temple Bar to the furthest j)oint of Cheapside, to tell 
at his return every sign as it stood in order on both sides of the 
way, repeating them either backwards or forwards ; and he did it 
exactly." His quickness in di.scovering resemblance was no less 
remarkable. This power, iiowever, was not exercised on subjects 
that test intellectual strength ; he did not strain his intellect like 
a great rhetorician to find telling arguments, nor like a great poet 
to find harmonious images. He wandered at will over the great 
stores accumulated by his memory, and annised himself in picking 
out incongruities, phiying upon names, making odd comparisons, 
and suchlike ingenious freaks. 

The chief destination of his scholarship is to tickle the sense of 
the ludicrous; no writer in our literature, except perhaps Burton, 
applies so much scholarship to so singular a purpose. "Wit," 
Coleridge said, "was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect." 

His outward ajipearauce was, to use a })hrase of his own, "hung 
out as a sign" of his disposition; the cheerful, careless, confident 
nature of the man was legible in his countenance. Though he 
lived in times of fierce excitement, and was violently thiust out 
from his quiet liome by the Puritans, and not permitted to take 
even his books with him,. yet he shows no stronger feeling towards 
the triumi)hant party than sly humorous ridicule of individual 
sectaries. His attachment to his friends was ecjually moderate; 
he probably had a bias for the Church of England, but he does 

of Palestine,' 1650; ' Ahel Redivivus' (a Martyrology), 1651 ; 'Cluirch History 
of Hritaiu,' 1656 ; ' I\Ii,\ed Coutfiiiplatioiis in Intter 'rjiues,' 1660; 'Worlliiusof 
Kiiglanil' (posthuiiioii.s), 1662. Fuller may be said to have lieun the tirsl " writer 
of book.s" by profession. He ackii' wlenges tliat one of his objects in writing 
was — " to get some honest profit to hini-elt." 

' It is dillicuit to niake out tlie personal appearance of some eminent English 
divines. Even their good looks are overrated by one party and uuderraled by 
audiher. 



266 FROM 1640 TO 1G70, 

not uphold the fame of her champions with anything approaching 
jealous impatience of contradiction. His eye seems to have been 
ever open to the comic aspects both of friend and of foe. He 
made a habit of looking at the world through a humorous me- 
dium. He conveys abundance of solid information, but his infor- 
mation has the oddest possible frame of witty nonsense. 

Confident and careless — careless in the sense of rising humor- 
ously superior to care — Fuller was not an idle man, disposed, like 
one of Charles Lamb's genial borrow ing fellows, to live upon the 
generosity of his friends. He took no earnest part in the fierce 
contest of his times, but the list of his works is ample proof of his 
capacity for honest industry. He puts comical wrappages about 
bis information, but it is unimpeachably substantial, and could not 
have been procured without steady application. 

He was born a Churchman, and continued a Churchman ; yet so 
moderate were his sentiments, that he was suspected of a leaning 
to Puritanism. Before the outbreak of the Civil War he preache I 
in London, and offended the party of the Parliament by advising 
submission to royal authority. When the rupture came, he fled to 
the king at Oxford, and there oflended the royalists by advising 
conciliation. 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — A good many archaisms occur in Fuller, though 
upon the whole he writes with a more modern phrase than any 
clergyman and scholar of the time. In his easy manner he would 
probably use the first word that came to hand. We meet with 
such olisolete words as " authenticalness," "cowardness" {coward- 
liness), "diurnal" {journal), " extempory " {extemporary), " dunci- 
cal" {stupid), "jocularly" {jocular), "farced" {stuffed), "misoclere" 
(hater of the clergy), " un understood," "volant" (volatile). Such 
of his words as " minutary " (analogous to momentary), and " order- 
aV)le," in the sense of submissive to orders, might with advantage 
have passed into general use. 

In Fuller's time English had not yet settled down to the present 
form of inflections. He is not at all uniform in his mode of in- 
flecting — sometimes he uses the modern forms, sometimes there 
stray across his i>age such forms as "took " for taken, " bleeded" 
(bled), " understanden," " understanded " (understood), "striek," 
"stroke," " strook " (struck), " sprongen " (sprung), " sungen " 
(sung). Sometimes he uses " his " instead of the possessive affix, 
" King James his reign." On one occasion he gives ivhole a com- 
parative "wholler." 

He mingled so much with the world, holding intercourse with 
all classes, and being a good listener to every form of garrulity, 



THOMAS FULLER. 2G7 

that he uses a larirer admixture of Saxon tlian his more recluse 
contemporaries. Besides, as Ave shall see, the use of very homely 
words is one of his instruments of ridicule. 

Sentences. — His sentences are not involved and intricate. In 
this respect he is much superior to Hooker, Taylor, or any theo- 
lou;ical writer of his time. The followincc. in his Church History, 
on the plan taken by James I. to reduce the power of the En,:.rlish 
noliility, is rather an exception ; he has comparatively few so loose 
and involved as this : — 

" But following the counsel of liis English secretary there present, he 
soon found a way to abate the formidable gieatne-ss of tlie English nobility, 
by conferring honour upon nnny persons ; whereby nobility was spread so 
broad, tluit it became \ ery thin, which much lessened the ancient esteem 
thereof." 

It must be allowed, however, that in a full statement, or in an 
argument jiursued at any length, he is not so much more skilled 
in avoiding intricacies than his contemporaries. He is orderly 
chiefly because he is brief — usually trying to despatch a statement 
of fact or an aruument as succinctly as ])Ossible. He is seldom 
drawn into com|)licated statements by a desire of saying too much. 

That he studied exjiressly to avoid tlie cumbrous efiect of for- 
mally indicating connection and dependence, may be inferred from 
his Prefaces, where he is put upon his mettle, and wiites with 
more care. Thus — 

"Seamen observe, tliat the water is the more troubled the nearer they 
draw on to the lami, because bioken by repercussion from the sliore. I am 
sensible of tlie same danger, the nearer I ap[)roach our times, and the end of 
this History." 

Most writers before the Restoration would have thrown these 
two sentences into one. 

He is a great master of short pointed sentences. His pages are 
strewn with pithy sayings, that stick in the mind like ])rovcrb3. 
Almost every jiaragraph is preceded by a short sentence giving the 
pith of the whole. Thus in his Essay on Tombs, he has the follow- 
ing aphorisms : " Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is 
but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered." 
" Tombs ought in some sort to be jiroportioncd, not to the wealth, 
but deserts of the party interred." "The shortest, plainest, and 
truest epitaphs are the best." "To want a grave is the cruelty 
of the living, not the misery of the dead." "A good memory is 
the best monument." 

Paragraphs. — He often digresses to tell an anecdote, bi^t is sen- 
sible of his digression. Sometimes he apologises, and tres to 
make out a connection ; at other times he throws himself on ihe 
reader's forbearance. Thus — " Pieader, whether smiling or frown- 
ing, forgive the digression." 



268 FROM 1640 TO 1G70. 

But there is this to be said for Fuller's digressions, they neN^er 
confuse. He lightens his subject by numerous par.igraiih breaks, 
made with considerable though not perfect accuracy, and — which 
is his main preventive of confusion — with every considerable 
change of subject, he gives a summary italic heading, and makes a 
fresh start. 

Figures of Speech. — Ilis style is thickly interspersed with in- 
genious similitudes. ''The chief diseases of the fancy," he says 
himself, "are either that it is too wild and high-soaring, or else 
too low and grovelling, or else ton desultory and over-voluble." 
The last is his own " disease." Ingenious as is the play of his 
fancy, it is much more luxuriant than would be tolerated now, and 
did not escape censure even in his own day. 

His figures, like Bacon's, are taken largely from his own obser- 
vations of common life — only, unlike Bacon's, they are nearly all, 
in accordance with the author's ruling tendency, calculated to 
make the reader laugh or smile. So far from exalting the object 
they are applied to, their purpose is to set it in a whimsical light ; 
the most serious subjects are set off with odd similitudes, and the 
reader is tempted to laugh where propriety requires him to be 
grave. The following are one or two examples. Of the good 
bishop, he says : — 

"He is careful and happy in suppressing of heresies and schisms. He 
distill truishfth of schismatics as physicians do of h^prous people : some are 
infectious, others not ; some are active to seduce others, otheis quietly enjoy 
their opinions in their own consciences. . . . To use force liefore p'-ople 
are fairly taucjht the truth, is to knock a nail into a board without wimbling 
a hole for it, which then either not enters, or turns crooked, or splits the 
wood it pierceth." 

Again — 

" Let us be careful to provide rest for our souls, and our bodies will pro- 
vide rest lor themselves. And let us not be herein like unto gentlewomen, 
who care not to keep the inside of the orange, but candy and preserve only 
the outside. " 

And, condemning the use of high-flown hinguage with inferior 
matter, he says — 

■'Some men's speeches are like the high mountains in Ireland, having a 
dirtj' bog in the top of theih." 

He advises the young writer to take advice of a faithful 
friend : — 

"When thou pennest an oration, let him have the power of the ' Index 
Expurgatorius ' to expunge what he pleaseth ; and do not thou, like a fond 
mother, cry if the child of thy brain be corrected for playing the wanton." 

Fuller himself " plays the wanton " in similitudes so often that 
we see a touch of the ludicrous in nearly every comparison that he 



THOMAS FULLER. 2G9 

makes, just as in conversatinn we are tickled by every word that 
falls from an acknowledged wit. 

A great many of his comparisons are historical ])arallels, or 
ingenious figurative applications of historical facts. The following 
ia an instance. Writing of one of his worthies, he says : — 

" He obtained a plentiful estate, and thereof gave wellnigh three thousand 
pounds to Sidney College. Now as it is reported of Uljsses, returning from 
his long travel in fon-ign lands, tli;it all his f:unily had forgot him ; so wlien 
the news of this legacy tiist arrived at tlie College, none tlien extant therein 
ever lieard of his name (so much may tlie sponue of forty years blot out in 
this kind); only the written register of the College faithlully retained his 
name tlierein. 

"This ins gift was a gift ndeed, purely bestowed on the College, as 
loaded witli no detrimental conditions, in the acceptance thereof. We read 
in the Prophet, 'Thou hast increased tlie nation, and not nadtiplied tlieir 
joy.' In propoi'tion whereunto, we know it is possible tlnit the comfortable 
condition of a College may not be incnased, though the number of the 
fellows and scholars therein be augmented, superaddeil branches suiking out 
the sap of the root ; whereas tlie legacy of this worthy knight ponebalur in 
lucro, beiug pure gain and improvement to the College. " 

Here we see the same whimsical vein, the same tendency to make 
ludicrous comparisons of small things with great, and great things 
wiih small. The following, from his ' j\Iixt Contemplations,' is a 
sample of his elaborate similitudes; it also illustrates the ludicrous 
meanness of comparison that grave divines have pronounced un- 
pardonable levity : — 

" I have observed that children when they first put on new shoes, are very 
curious to keep tliem clean. Scarce will they set iheir feet on the ground 
for fear to dirt the soles of their shoes. Yea, rather they will wipe the 
leather clenn with their coats ; and yet, perchance, the next day they will 
trample with the same shoes in the mire up to the ankles. Alas, chi dren's 
]ilay is our earnest ! On that day wherein we receive the sacrament, we are 
often over-j>recise, scrupling to say or do tl ose things which lawfully we 
may. But we, who are more than curious that day, are not so much as care- 
ful the next; and too often (whnt shall I say ?) go on in sin up to the ankles: 
yea, our sins go over our heads." 

While the great majority of Fuller's similitudes have a whimsical 
turn, he often employs them to convey sound praclicul advice. 
Thus— 

"Parents who cross the current of their children's genius (if running in 
no vicious channels), tempt them to take worse courses themselves." 

QUALITIES OP STYLE. 

Simplicity. — The drawback to Fuller's simplicity is the vice of 
his age — the parade of learned terms and unnecessary allusions. 
Expressions are quoted with chapter and verse when the quotation 
serves no purpose of illustration, and can excite in the reader only 



270 FROM 16^0 TO 1G70. 

a pedantic pleasure that he has seen it before, or a whimsical 
surprise at seeing brought together two cases that have no material 
resemblance. It is, however, but just to say that he is much less 
pedantic than Taylor or Browne, and immeasuralily less so than 
Burtnn. Only now and then do we come across such a passage as 
occurs in the following Dedication to Douse Fuller : — 

" I cannot sny certainly of you, as Naomi did of Bonz, ' Ke is near of kin 
unto us,' Euth ii. 20 ; having no assurance, tliough great proljaliility, of 
alliance unto you. However, sir, if you shall be pleased in cdurtesy to 
account me your kinsman, I will endeavour that (as it will be an liouour to 
me) it may be to you no disgrace." 

Or such as the following, where the homeliest Saxon rubs shoulders 
with canonical Latin : — 

"First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What 
wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head which was there 
tacked rather tlian fastened ? whereas those notions which get in by vloleuta 
possess^'o, will abide there till ejeciio frma, sitdcuess, or extreme age, disjios- 
sess them. ]t is best knocking in the nail over-night, and clinching it in 
the next morning." 

Perspicuity. — One thing that helps largely to make Fuller's 
style so remarkably easy reading is his perspicuous arrangement. 
"Method," he says himself, "is the mother oi memory." In all 
his Avorks he follows a simple plan : there is consequently no con- 
fusion, no perplexity ; we are not irritated by searching for a fact, 
and finding it out of its proper connection ; we can find what we 
want in a moment. Take, for instance, his ' Worthies.' He there 
gives an account of the notabilities of England county Vjy county, 
proceeding in each county after a fixed order, which he explains at 
the beginning of the book. How highly he valued the principle 
of order appears in his anxiety to show how well he had observed 
it. In an introductory chapter designed to anticipate objections to 
the " style and matter of the author," divided into heads and num- 
bered, as is his manner with every subject, he supposes "Exception 
i6 " to be as follows : — 

"You lay down certain rules for the better regulating yonr work, and 
directing the reader, [)rondsiiig to confine yourself to the observation thereof, 
and break them often yourself. For instance, you restrain the topic of 
lawyers to capital judges and writers of the law ; yet under that head insert 
Judge Paston and others, who were only puny judges in their respective 
courts. . . . Why did you break such rules, when knowing you made 
them ? Why did you make such rules, when minding to break them ? " 

To this he returns the follo\\ ing — 

" Anawer. — 1 never intended to tie myself up so close, without reserving 
lawful liberty to myself ujjon just occasion. ... I resolved to keep the 
kev in ni}' own hands, to enlarge myself when I apprehended a just cause 
thereof. However, I have not made use of this key to recede from my first 



THOMAS FULLER. 271 

limitations, save where I crave leave of and render a reason to tlie reader ; 
sncli anomalous persons being men of bigli merit, under those heads where 
they are inserted. " 

In giving- an account of arguments, he states the two sides separ- 
ately, often printing them in parallel columns. The reasonings of 
opposite parties in the Church ai'e exhibited on this handy method. 
So when he argues himself, he analyses the positions of his adver- 
Biirj', and re[ilies to them cme by one, nuniliering each position, and 
lalielling the argument and the answer with an italic heading to 
prevent every possibility of confusion, and to let the reader know 
where he is at a glance. 

The ' Holy State' and the ' Profane State' are models of simple 
arrangement. In the ' Holy State' he describes a number of good 
characters, first an ideal unfolded in a number of maxims, then an 
example to correspond. Thus, for " the good servant " he lays 
down seven maxims — "(i) He dotli not dispute his master's will, 
but doth it ; " " (2) He loves to go about his business with cheer- 
fulness ; " " (3) He despatches his business with quickness and ex- 
peditiun," and so on. This is followed up by the life of Eliezer, 
the steward of Abraham's household. The ' Profane State ' is the 
counterpart of the ' Holy State,' dealing with bad characters, the 
Harlot, the Heretic, the Traitor, &c. One of the books of the 
'Holy State' deals with virtues and vices in the abstiact, plenti- 
fully illustrated and embellished with anecdotes and fancies. 

Strength. — Under this head little need be said of Fuller. His 
style has the vigour of brief statement and well-chosen words ; but 
lie never attempts to soar, and when he does, is soon tempted back 
to his homely level by some oddity of comparison. 

Brevity is a very conspicuous feature in his style. In none of 
Fuller's works could we read three sentences on end without being 
reminded of the saying that "Brevity is the soul of wit." 

Fathi)!<. — His genius was more inclined to pathos than to 
strength: but his ex^iression of tenderness is seldom direct ; it is 
to be found in the disguise of humour, lurking in some droll con- 
ceit. There is a quaint kindliness in his conclusion of the ' Life 
of Phileinnii Holland,' the translator of Camden's 'Britannia.' 
*' This Tererable translator was translated to heaven in the year 
16—." 

But how little he could resist the attraction of comical allusions, 
even in the most pitiful circumstancas, is seen in his account of an 
accident that happened to a Catholic congregation : — 

"The sermon began to incline to the middle, the day to the end thereof; 
■wlien en a sudden the floor fell down whereon they were assemhhd. It gave 
no charitable warning groan beforehnnd, hut emcked, broke, ami fell, all in 
sn instant Many were killed, more bruised, all frighted. S;ul sight, to 
bt-huld the flesh d2^J blood of different persons mingled together, and the 



272 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

brains of one on the head of another ! One lacked a leg ; another an arm ; 
a third whole and entire, wanting nothing but breath, stifled in the ruins."* 

As we noted in the case of Macaulay, his interest in unimport- 
ant facts overbears his interest in the tragic aspects of a scene. 
His account of the death of Charles is very matter-of-fact, and 
Bhows the antiquary predominating over the man. True, one or 
two of the facts are suggestive. Even the conclusion, the most 
dryasdust of the whole, will set some on the track of a reflection 
or a moral : — 

" On the Wednesday se'nnight after, (Febrnary 7th), his corpse, em- 
balmed and cottiiud in lead, wis delivered to the core of two of his 
servants, to be buried in Windsor; the one Anthony Mikhnay, wlio for- 
merly liad been his sewer, as I take it; the other Jolin Joyiier, bred lirst 
in his MHJesty's kitchen, afterwards a prtrliament-caiitain, since by them 
deputed (when the Scots surrendered his pi-rson) cook to his llajesty. 
This niglit tliey brought the corpse to Windsor, and dii^'ged a grave for it in 
St George's Chapel, on tlie south side of the communion-table." 

But certainly there is no superfluous sentiment on the part of the 
author. It might, indeed, have been dangerous to moralise under 
the circumstances ; we could, however, have dispensed with the 
gossip about his Majesty's cook. 

Wit and Humour. — The chief part of our author's reputation is 
based on his wit. A pleasant vein runs through everything he 
wrote, no matter what the subject, dignified or undignitied, grave 
or gay. His very sermons are full of the same quaint humour. 
By some of his contemporaries, as we have said, he was frowned 
upon for treating solemn things in a tone of levity ; but there is 
no better evidence of the power of wit to disurni resentment than 
the fact remarked by his recent editor, that Fuller "was permitted 
to give utterance to some strong sentiments, which less favoured 
individuals durst scarcely own to have found a lodgment within 
their breasts." 

His wit is genial and good-natured ; sometimes he burlesques 
the conduct of a sectary with considerable rudeness ; but in general 
his laugh is kindly. 

Nearly all liarrow's varieties of wit might be illustrated copi- 
ously from Fuller ; indeed, he may have written his remarks on 
wit with Fuller's pages open before him. We have seen examples 
of the " odd similitude " and the " pat allusion to a known story." 
The "seasonable application of sayings," and the "forging of 
apposite tales," are of the same kind, and need not be farther 
illustrated. A large part of the wit consists in "playing in words 
and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense 
or the affinity of their sound." Laud is "a man of low stature, 
but of high parts;" Pr Field is "that learned divine whose 
memory smelleth like a Field the Lord hath blessed;" Nicholas 



THOMAS FULLER. 273 

Sanders, being an enemy of the Church, is " inme truly Slanders." 
Fuller never misses an opportunity of ])Uiining. Sonutiuios the 
puns are very elaborate, as in the following. Take first the 
seventh item in the character of the good widow : — 

" If she speaks little good of him" (lier dead hns'iaml) "she spnnJcs hut 
little of Ibivi. So haiiilsonnd)" folding up lier discourse, tliat liis virtues are 
shown outwards, and liis vices wi-apt up in silence ; as counting it barbarism 
to throw dirt ou his luenioiy who jialh moulds cast on his body." 

Take next an item in the character of the good master : — 

" 2'hc wages he contracts for he didy and trulij jmys to his servants. The 
same word in the Greek, I6s, siguilies 'rust' ami 'poison'; and some 
strong poison is made of the lust of metals ; but none more venomous thiin 
the ru.>t of money in the rich man's ]iuise unjustly detained from the 
labourer, which will poison and infect his whole estate." 

He is fond of constructing opportunities for droll rejoinders. 
In the introductory chapters to his '.Worthies,' already mentioned, 
he imngines and deals as follows with — 

"Exception g. — 'Haste makes waste.' You have huddled your book too 
soon to the press, for a subject of such a nature. . . . 

" Nonumque prematur in annum. 

" Eigl.t years digest wliat ynu li.i ve rudely liinted, 
An I ill the nintli year let the same be jiriiite I. 

"Answer. — That ninth year might hajipen eight years after my death, ' 
&c. 

The following is an unexpectedly conclusive evidence. By 
the beginning one is prepared only for some slight doubt of the 
suspicion : — 

"The suspicion of making it" (something in the wny of Church con- 
troversy) " fell on Gregoiy Murtin : one jirobuble enough for such a prank 
(as being Divinity Professor at Hheinis) did not liis epitaph there ensure me 
he was dead and buried two years before." 

In the following he whimsically imagines, and objects to a 
strictness of literal interpretation that few would think of con- 
tending for : — 

" St Paul snith, ' Let not the sun go down on your wrath.' to c^rry news 
to the antii>odes in anotlur world of tliy revengihil iiatme. Yet let us 
lake the apostle's meaning rather than his words, with all possible speed to 
dispose our passions ; not umlerstamliiig him so lireialy tiiiit wemay lake 
leave to be angry till sunset ; then miuht our wrath lengthen with the days, 
and men in Greenland, where day lasts above a quarter of a year, have 
plentiful scope of revenge." 

Wit is not the only comical seasoning of Fuller's amn.sinfr pro- 
ductions. Throughout his 'Church History' and his 'Worthies,' 
■we are kept in a perpetual smile by the purposely un ignilied 
familiarity of his language. Sometimes this becomes open 

s 



274 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

burlesque, as iu his account of Brown, the founder of the 
*' Brownists " : — 

" Some years after Brown went over into Zealand, to purchase himself 
more leimtatiou from foreign parts. For a smack of travel ffives a high 
ta^te to strange opinions, making them better relish to the licorish lovers 
of novelty. Home he retuiiis with a full cry against the Church of England, 
as, having so much of Eome, she had notliing of Christ in her discipline. 
Norfolk was the first jdai'e whereon Biown (uevv-flowu home out of the Low 
Countries) perched himself, and therein," &c. 

As another instance of this, note how he speaks of the Round 
Table legends :— 

" / s foi- his Rijiind Table, with his knights about it, the tale whereof hath 
trundled so smoothly along for many ages, it never met with much belief 
among the judicious." 

The strict method of his works, so far from being a shackle to 
his wit, furnishes him with additional opportunities for quaint 
turns. Thus he concludes his account of Brown by saying : — 

"Thus to make our story of the troublesome man the more entiie, we 
have tiespassi-d on the two following years, yet without discomposing our 
chionology in the margin." 

Again, writing of Bishop Barnes and Bernard Gilpin, he says : — 

"Seeing they were loving in their lives, in my hook their memories 
shall not be divided, though 1 confess the latter died some three years 
before." 

No other quality of Fuller's style calls for special illustration. 
Brevity, point, simplicity, and wit, are his conspicuous character- 
istics. In the examples quoted, the reader will have noticed that 
he is fond of alliteration, an almost unconscious habit with nearly 
every writer of point. Taste is not a merit of Fuller's ; he is ;in 
eccentric wiiter, setting good taste at defiance in the pursuit of 
his favourite effect. An historian and an antiquary in name, lie 
is too easy and superficial to rank high in that species of composi- 
tion : he has in his favour sim[)licity of language, and almost 
unique attention to arrangement ; but the subject-matter of his* 
works is only a field for the exercise of his extraordinary memory 
and his irrepressible wit. 

JEREMY TAYLOR, 1813-1667. 

A man of genius, the most distinguished prose writer of this 
period. He has been called " the Shakspeare of English prose," 
anl "the Chrysostom of the English Pulpit": and the designa- 
tions are less fanciful than such designations often are. 

Of his private life few particulars are known ; he is said to 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 275 

have written an autobiography, but it has perished. Even the 
main dates in his public career have been tniced with some 
difficulty. We know in general that he suffered in the temporary 
eclipse of the Episcopalian party, an 1 Cliat he lived to be rewarded 
at the IJestofation. 

He was born in Cambridge, of humble parentage ; and educated 
there at the Grammar School and at Cams College. When only 
twenty years of age, he preached before Archbishop Laud, and his 
eloquence and youthful beauty made such an impression that the 
prelate at once t^ok him under pati'onage, placed him at All Souls 
in Oxford, j>rocured him a fellowship), and appointed him one of 
'his own chaplains. In 1637-3S, he was presented \>y the llishop 
of London to the rectory of Ui)i>ingham, in llutlandshiie. At the 
breaking out of the Civil War, he re^iaid the favour of his patrons 
by a work in defence of Episcoi)acy ; for this the king made him 
D.D., while the Presbyterians, then rapidly gaining strength, 
sequestrated his rectory. 

About 1643 he retired to the residence of his mother-in-law in 
Wales, but before lie had been long there, the tide of war rolling 
in that direi'tion, he was taken prisoner by the forces of the Parlia- 
ment, and ke[it tor some time in confinement. On his release he 
su[iptirted himself by keeping a school, and during that time com- 
posed his ' Liberty of Proi)hesying.' Thereafter he found a |iatroii 
in the Earl of Carbery, and lived for some years at that noMeman's 
seat. Golden Grove. There he wrote his ' Life of Christ,' and a 
work named after the place, 'Golden Grove.' An attack upon the 
Puritans in the 'Golden Grove' offended Cromwell; in 1654 he 
was a[)prehende 1, and during three or four years more than once 
suffered imprisonment. Li 1658 he obtained from his friends an 
alternate lectureship at Lisburne, in tiie north of heland, where 
he remained till the Piestoration. By Charles II. he was made 
Bishop of Down and Connor, and subsequently of Dromore. He 
died at Portmore, on the 3d of August 1667. 

iMost of his works were written during his virtual exile in Wales. 
The exceptions were strictly professional works: ' Eiiiscoi)acy 
Asserted,' published in 1642; 'Discourse of Confirmation,' ia 
1663, after his elevation to the bishopric; and 'Dissuasive from 
Popery,' in 1664. His ' Liberty of Prophesying,' 'Life of Christ,' 
'Holy Living and Holy Dying,' and ' Ductor Dubitantium,' were 
all composed during his seclusion, the last work being comphted 
at Lisburne. His treatise on ' ]\e[)entance' was written between 
1654 and 165S, during his inii)risoiimeiits. 

Taylor was a very handsome man, rather above the middle 
height, with a dark sparkling eye, and features almost teminine ia 
their delicacy. 

The characteristic of his intellect is luxuriant activity and pio 



276 FROM 1G40 TO 1670. 

ductiveness rather than accuracy or taste.^ For one that wrote so 
much and was not merely an un[)roductive dungeon of learning, 
his scholarsliip was enormous : but he does not seem to have veri- 
fied his references with much care, and he has been detected in 
some ludicrously bad translations. Comparatively few items of 
his learning were allowed to sleep ; all his works, whether techni- 
cal, contn)versial, or practical, are crowded with supertiuous quotsr 
tioiis and allusions. As an evidence of his intellectual activity, 
consider what he wrote during his residence in Wales, the variety 
of sul)jects that he entertained ; compare him in this res})ect with 
the "judicious" Hooker, a more careful scholar, but a much less 
active ])roducer. The same characteristic appears in his impas- 
sioned flights ; he is, says De Quincey, " restless, fervid, aspiring, 
scattering abroad a prodigality of life." He aban ions himself 
without reserve to the inspiration of the moment, eagerly accumu- 
lating circiunstances and similitudes, his free flight trammelled by 
no punctilious care to frame the particulars into a harmonious 
whole. In the tilling out of his opulent pictures, he is equally 
unimpeded by a scrupulous regard for facts ; in his telling illustra- 
tions of the decay of human splendour, he takes upon trust the 
most outrageous fal)les. 

With all his scholarshi]) and ingenuity, he had, if we may judge 
from his writings, a youthful freshness of sentiment. When thrust 
from his living by the great Rebellion, he did not acquiesce in 
silence, but, trusting probably to his distance from the centre of 
power and to the protection of Lord Carbery, he denounced the 
new Government as "disgracing the articles of religion, and pol- 
luting pulilic assemblies," and stigmatised the new preachers as 
"impertinent and ignorant," fruitless " crabstocks." Thus warm 
in his expressions of dislike, he was no less warm in his expressions 
of affection : with all his learning, a vain, warm-hearted, childlike 
man. It seems strange that there should ever have been among 
biographers a dispute whether or not he was a woman-hater. Ten- 
derness would seem to have been his ruling emotion. "There is 
nothing," he says, " can please a man without love." His works 
contain mnny passages of demonstrative affection. He expatiates 
with peculiar fondness upon children, and upon the delights of the 

* We made a somewhat similar remark about Bacon, and as the two minds are 
so difierent in tdeir general tigure, in their appearance as wholes, it may be well 
to mention the more important analysed elements of ditlerence. One vast dif- 
ference lies in this, that Bacon was more original and constructive: Bacon, a3 
his chaplain says, " never was a plodder upon hooks," and had comparatively 
little scliolarship ; Taylor's scholarship is a standing suhjecr of wonder and ad- 
miration. Bacon had \ery little poetical feeling; Taylor had all the gilts of a 
])oet exi'cpt metre. The two men resenihle eai-h other in their enormous powers 
of intellectual work; they diti'er immeasurably in the quality and direction of 
that work. 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 277 

" sanctuary and refectory " of the domestic circle, " his gardens of 
sweetness and chaste refreshment." 

In a writer of casuistical morality, profoundly versed in the 
interminable dusty volumes of the schnolmen, we should not ex- 
pect much sensibility to the beauties and grandeurs of nature. 
Yet Taylor shows tliis sensibility in rich abundance. He was not 
a dry, unmoved observer like Bacon. He had a profound suscep- 
tibility to the luxuries of the eye. In our illustrations of his style, 
we sliall quote many evidences of his delighteu contemplation of 
external life. It probably was the charm derived from this 
source that commended his writings so powerfully to the nature- 
poets of this centiu-y. Not only was he alive to beauties of form 
and colour, and to tender associations : he looked with delight 
upon the grandeurs of nature, upon the exciting phenomena 
of storms and tempests. Earely indeed do we fuid such scholar- 
ship and subtlety combined with so fresh an interest in the outer 
world. 

Of gentle disposition and ingratiating manners, he had not the 
hardihood required for the stir and bustle of practical life. He 
showed none of the political capacity of VVhitgift or of Laud. His 
eloquence and personal grace made him a favourite : his learning 
and his services as a literary champion sanctioned his promotion 
to a bishopiic. Warm in his expressions of resentment, he had 
not the courage of a martyr. When imprisoned for his outburst 
against the Puritans, he was not obdurate in his recriminations; 
he did not spend his imprisonment in the refractory occupation of 
com[)Osing further invectives, but quietly turned to his Ijooks, and 
wrote his treatise on Ile])entance. 

The most generally celebrated of Taylor's opinions are those 
contained in his ' Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying.' It is 
an elaborate argument for religious toleiation. It does not recom- 
mend absolute freedom of opinion; it makes a stand u2)on the 
Apostles' Creed, and urges that no person subscribing to this 
should be denied communion by any Christian sect. It even 
allows difference of opinion as to the clause regarding Christ's 
descent into hell. The argument of the work is not abstract, a 
'priori: he does not uphold freedom to differ as a "natural right"; 
this idea was of later growth. He reasons from experience; 
pointing out the difficulty of ascertaining the real truth ; dilating 
upon, and, after his wont, copiously exemplifying, the fallibility 
of all human interjireters of Scrijiture — Popes, Councils, Fathers, 
or Writers Ecclesiastical. The work is not, as is sometimes stated, 
the first direct argument for toleiation. It arose naturally at a 
tmie when difference of opinion, i)rolific of bitter dissensions for 
almost a century, had culminated in the distraction of civil war. 



278 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

While Taylor deserves and will ever receive all honour for hia 
spirit of moderation, it would be unjust to Grindall, Hales, Chil- 
lingworth, and other tolerant Churchmen of former generations, to 
represent him as the fir^t advocate of religious liberality. 

His opinions on original sin made greater noise in his own day 
than his toleration. He was accused of being Pelagian, and seems 
to have held that original sin is "an effect or condition of nature, 
but no sin properly," that it cannot be repented of, in the pro[)er 
sense of the word repent, and that no person shall be visited with 
eternal damnation for original sin only. 

His ' Ductor Dubitantium ' (Guide to the Scrupulous) — a work 
filling two closely-printed large octavo volumes, in Mr Eden's 
revision of Heber's edition — occupies a middle position between 
the casuistry of the schoolmen and the moral philosophy of such 
writers as Tucker and Paley. He deals more with the exposition 
of general principles than the scholastic casuists, and exhibits a 
larger number of cases and a greater subtlety in distinguishing 
degrees of guilt than Faley. 

ELEMENTS OP STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — The pedantic bookish element is very conspicuoua 
in Taylor's language. He coins extensively both from Latin and 
from Greek. He uses " deturpated " for deformed, " claucularly " 
for secretly, " immorigerous " for disobedient, "intenerate" for 
render soft, "paranympli" for lady's-maid. In like manner he 
applies words according to their Latin etymology, and contrary to 
the growing usage — "insolent" in the sense of unusual, "extant 
figures" (figures in relief), an "excellent" pain {surpassing, ex- 
treme). 

He has, besides, some few mannerisms. He goes beyond the 
extreme idiomatic licence in the way of forming plurals to abstract 
nouns — "aversenesses," "dissolutions," "prudencies," "strengths," 
" tolerations." Also, he uses abstract nouns in the same construc- 
tion with concrete nouns, and where the construction is unidio- 
matic for abstract nouns. This occurs very often, and appears in 
several of our quotations. As an example for the present take the 
following : " The des[)ised drops were grown into an artificial 
river and an intolerahle mischief ;" "the rivulet swelling into 
rivers and a vastness;" "the sea shall descend into kolluivness and 
a prndigioiis drought." Another usage has been noted, — the com- 
parative employed to express a degree short of the extreme ; but 
this is not so peculiar. Examples are — "The Libyan lion drawn 
from his vMder foragings ; " "a sad arrest of the looseness and 
wilder feasts of the Fiench Court." 

These " pedanterias " aside, Taylor has a powerful coniniand 



JEKEMY TAYLOR. 279 

of the language. There was no greater master of English in 
his day. 

Sentences. — He is very careless in the structure of his sentences. 
In few passages even of his driest WDiks is the syntax grammatical 
in six sentences upon end ; and when he warms to his sul>ject, lie 
adds clause to clause as it were in a breath, without stopping to 
look back and see whether the accumulation has resulted in a 
coherent sentence. Inasmuch as he always writes with verve^ this 
characteristic meets us in every i)age, indeed very often in the tlrst 
sentence. As an example, take the first sentence in his ' Contem- 
plations on Time,' where the connection of tlie clauses and the 
sequence of the tenses are alike irregular : — 

"All philosopliers which have tlioiight of the nature of time, ami which 
■with much subtlety have disputed what it was, at length come to couchide. 
That they knew not what it is ; tlie most they can icacli unto is, That no 
time is long ; and tliat can only be called time which is present, the wliich 
is but a moment; and how can that lie said to bo, since tlie only cause wliy 
it is, is because it sliall not be, but is to pass into thu 2Jreterit, so as we can- 
not affirm it to have a being ? " 

Very often his sentence is a string of statements bearing on the 
Bame subject, each joined to the preceding by the conjunction 
"and." The following is of unusual length, but otherwise is a 
fair specimen : — 

"But when Christian religion was planted, and liad taken root, and had 
filled all binds, then all tlie nature of things, the wiiole crcMtion, became 
servant to the kingdom of grace ; a7id the head of the religion is also iho 
head of the creatures, and ministers all tlie things of the world in order to 
the spiiit of grace: and now 'angels are ministering spiiits sent forth to 
minister for tlie good of them that fear the Lord ; ' and all the violences of 
men, and things of nature, and choice, are forced into subjection and 
lowest ministries, and to co-operate as with an united design, to verify all 
the ]iromises of the Gospel, and to secure and advantage all the children of 
the kingdom : and now he that is made ]>oor by chance or persecution, is 
made rich by religion ; and he that hath nothing," — and so on. 

One thing his sentences are free from ; they are very rarely 
made intricate by elaborate involutions and suspensions such as 
we find in Hooker. He has many classical idiums and superfiuoua 
connectives, but the structure is simple. 

Artificial condensations are pretty frequent. The peculiar use 
of the abstract noun (p. 278) is a mode of condensation. In many 
cases the condensation is niore marked than in those quoted, as, 
for example, in the following : — 

"And what can we comjdaiii of the weakness of our strengths, or the 
pressure of diseases, Avhen we see a poor soUlier stand in a biearh almost 
starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be rdir,ved only hy the heats 
of anyer, aft^ver, or a fired musket, and his hunycr slacked by a yrculer jiain 
and a huge fear ? This man shall stand in his arms, ami wounds, ^aij<;?w 



280 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

luminis atque soils, pale and faint, wenry and watchful ; and at night shall 
have a bullet ^mllf.d out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure 
his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its oivn dimension." 

Figures of Speech. — Taylor's style is richly embellished with 
metaphors and similes taken from numerous sources, from famil- 
iar operations of life, from nature, and from books.^ These need 
not be specially illustrated. On the figures taken from books, the 
remark may be made that they are often absurdly learned. This 
belongs to the parade of scholarship already mentioned as being 
fostered in English sermons by the taste of the Court. Taylor 
carries this pedantry to an extreme. Any of his contemporaries 
or predecessors might have said that " Nero might be called Most 
Clement with as much reason as some princes are styled INIost 
Magnificent;" but perliaps none of them would have ventured 
to speak in their sermons of " the tender lard of the Apulian 
swine," or "garments stained with the 'I'yrian fish," or "garments 
made of the Calabrian fleece, and stained with the blood of the 
murex." 

His most notable and characteristic figures are the elaborate 
similitudes from nature. In these he does not confine himself to 
the features of strict resemblance, but makes each similitude a 
complete picture in a single sentence, the circumstances being 
accumulated in the opulent irregular manner already described. 
The following are instances ; others occur in the illustration of his 
pathos : — 

" So we sometimes espy a bright cloud formed into an irregular figure ; 
when it is observed by unskilful and fantustic travellers, it looks like a 
centaur to some, Jind as a castle to others ; some tell tliat they saw an army 
with banners, and it signifies war; but another wiser tlian this fellow, says 
it looks for all the world like a flock of sheep, and foretells jtlenty ; and all 
the wliile it is notliing but a shining cloud, by its own mobility and the 
activity of a wind cast into a contingent and inartificial shape ; so it is in 
this great mystery of our religion, in which some espy strange things which 
God intended not, and others see not what God has plainly told." 

" For so have I known the boisterous north wind pass through the yield- 
ing nir which ojiened its bosom, and appeased its violence by entertaining it 
with e:isy coni|iliaiiee in all the regions of its reception : but when the same 
bre.ilh of heaven hnth been checked with the stillness of a tower, or the 
united strength of a wood, it grew mighty and dwelt there, and made the 

1 The fanciful conceits of the time appear in consideralile numbers. Even 
Euphuism, in the restricted sense of similitudes from fabulous natural history, 
shjws itself now and again. Thus, "No creature among beasts, but being 
smitten, will fall upon the way to relieve itself, except a blind incogitant sinner. 
Such as have written upon their sagacity in that kind, tell us that the fishes in 
the fresh water, being struck with a tool of iron, will rub themselves upon the 
glutinous skin of the tench to be cured. The hart wounded with an arrow rims 
to the herb dittany to bite it, that the shaft may fall out that stuck in his body. 
The swallow will seek out the gi-een tetterwort to recover the eyes of her young 
ones when they are blinded. Only a stupid sinner forgets," kc. 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 281 

hijihest branches stoop, and make a smooth path for it on the top of all ita 
glories. So is sickness, and so is the gnce of God." (In reference to the 
subduing jiower of sickness and the evils of impatience.) 

" For so doth the humble ivy creep at the foot of the oak, and leans upon 
its lowest liasp, and beus shade and protection, and leave to grow undi-r its 
brandies, and pay a friendly iidlmnce for its niiglity putroimge; and tiiey 
grow and dwell together, and are tiie most reniarkaiile i>f friends and married 
jiairs of all tiie leafy nation." (An illustration of the connection between 
Church and State.) 

In these similitudes, as the reader will notice, he throws aside 
the purpose of close and pointed illustratiim, and luxuriates in till- 
ing up the picture for its own sake. Another instance shows a still 
more rapturous plenitude of picturesque details : — 

" For thus the sun is the eye of the world ; and lie is indifferent to the 
negro or the cold Russian, to tiiem that dwell umier the line, and them that 
stand near the tropics, the si'alded Indian, or the poor boy that shakes at 
the foot of the Rijjliean hills; but the flexures of the heaven and the earth, 
the conveniency of abode, and the ajjproaches to the north or south, ies])ec- 
tively change the emanations of his heauis ; not that they do not pass ahva\s 
from him, but tiiat they are not etpially received li(dow, but liy periods and 
changes, by little inlets and reflections ; they receive what tliey can, and 
some have only a dark day and a long night from him ; snows and white 
cattle, a miserable life, and a perpetual harvest of catarrhs and consump- 
tions, apoplexies and dead palsies ; but some have splendid tires ami aromatic 
S]dces, ricli wines and weU digested fruits, great wit ami great coui'age, be- 
cause they dwell in his eye, and look in his face, and are the courtiers of the 
sun, and wait upon him in his chambers of the east." 

A great many such outbursts into gorgeous imagery occur in 
Taylor's writings; but the reader must not expect to find them in 
every page. 

QUALITIES OF STYLK 

Simplicity. — Taylor's style, though not to be called simple, is 
not stiff, nor stately, nor Latinised; he uses more fnmiliar lan- 
guage than either Hooker, or Milton, or Sir Thomas Browne. He 
introduces, as we have seen, many pedantic terras and bookish 
illustrations : further, in his sermons, and still more in his formal 
trca'ises, he carries to an extreme the then prevailing fashion of 
backing the most obvious statements with superfluous hosts of 
authorities, quoting scraps of Latin and Greek, sometimes with 
translations, sometimes without. The ' Ductor Dubitantium' is 
especially loaded with this cumbersome scholarship. Take as an 
example part of his exposition of the "rule" that "the virtual 
and interpretative consent of the will is imputed to Good or 
Evil " :— 

" I. This rule is intended to exjilicate the nature of social crimes, in 
which a man's will is deeper than his hand, thoiigli the action of the will is 
often indirect and collateral, coiise<pieQt or distant ; Imt if by any means it 



282 FROM 1C40 TO 1670. 

hath a portion into the effect, it is entire in the guilt. And this hajipens 
many ways. 

"2. (i) By ratihaliition and confirmntion. 

" ' In niah'Tieio ratiliabitio inan<lato con)])aratur,' snith the law : To com- 
mand another to do violence is imputed to him that commands it more than 
to him that does it. So Ulpian, intcrjjreting the interdict ' Ihide tu ilium 
vi dt'jeci.^ti,' alliiins 'eum qiioque dejicere qui alteri mamiavit vel jussit:' 
and tlierefore i'lolemy was guilty of the blood of Pompey, when he sent 
Photinus to kill hiiu — 

' Ilic factum domino priEstitit.' — Martial. 

Now because ratihabition is, by presumption of law, esteemed as a com- 
mandment, therelbre Ulpian allirms of both alike, ' Dcjicit et ipii mandat, 
et di^jicit qui ratmn habet : ' ' He that commands and lie that consents aft(;r 
it is done, are equally re^ponsilde. ' Now, ihout^h the law particuhirly allirms 
this only 'in maleficio,' in criminal and injuiious actions, yet, in tlie edition 
of Holoander, that clause is not inserted, and it is also certain," &c. 

The above is the beginning of a section in the ' Ductor Dubitan- 
tium,' and is a fair specimen of the beginnings of all tlie sections 
in that work. 

The subjects discussed in the ' Ductor' are of the most abstruse 
kind, at least in their schohistic guise as problems regarding the 
Conscience and the Will ; and were the book written throughout 
in the above style it would be still less read than it is. The above, 
however, though a fair sample of the beginning, is not a fair 
sample of the body of a section ; having stated the problem in the 
above abstruse fashion, he proceeds to give copious exemplifica- 
tions. Thus, to a reader once made acquainte 1 witii the peculiar 
psychology and the technical distinctions, the work is not so hope- 
lessly perplexing. Still, with every allowance, it is a very abstruse 
production, never tempting the general reader, and perused only 
now and then by an antiquarian stud'^nt of ethics; it^ principal 
use to the student of composition being to furnish an idea of the 
bad expository method of the schoolmen. 

In works upon more familiar subjects — in his sermons and in 
his ' Holy Living and Holy Dying, ' — he reiterates so nuvch, and 
presents his statements so much "dressed up in circumstances," 
that the heavy effect of his abstract language and Latin quota- 
tions is less felt : it is felt, but more as an encumbrance th;in as a 
source of perplexity. The general run of his language is simple. 
His sermons aie much more easily followed than Donne's. 

In respect of simple airangement he is far from being equal to 
Fuller. Compare, for exanqile, the 'Holy Living' with Fuller's 
'Holy State.' Fuller is less pretentious: he takes up severally 
different ranks and conditions of men, — Servunts, Masters, Hus- 
bands, Bishojis, &c. — and lays down maxims for the guidance of 
each : and besides this, discusses certain virtues one after another 
in an easy way, with no attempt at classification. Taylor is more 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 283 

ambitious of a complete system of ctliics. He tukes a g'^neral 
view of the subject, maps it out into three divisious — Christian 
Sobriety, Christinn Justice, and Chi-istinn lieiigion (corres|)onding 
to tlie common division — Duty to ourselves, Duty to others. Duty 
to God). Having majiped out the subject, he proceeds to consider 
various virtues — Modesty, Humility, Obedience to superiors, Faith, 
ite. — in minute detail. But while more C'implete and exhaustive 
than Fuller, he is much less easy to apprehend and rememV)er ; he 
multiplies subdivisions with extravagant minuteness. For ex- 
ample, he gives "Twenty-three Ivules for employing our Time;" 
and the following is his analysis of "Section IV. of Humility": — 

" Xinc arguinrnts acininst Pride, hy way of Cori^idcration. 
Ni'iicteen Acts or Offices of Humility. 
Fourtrni Means and Exercises of obtaining and increasing the Grace 

of Humility. 
Seventeen Signs of Humility. " 

With reference to the above, under the bead of Clearness, it is 
to be observed that the \\ant of sim[ilicity in this tedious sub- 
dividing is not compensated liy a gain of precision. On the con- 
trary, both in the larger and in the smaller divisions, there is 
much overlapping and confusion. He is too hurried and careless 
to be either easy to understand or accurate in his divisions and 
classifications. Speed is everything with him : he seems to have 
written on impetuously, recording his first thoughts, and instead 
of obliterating what he saw to be incorrect, trying rather to square 
it with the truth by qualifications — a fertile source of intricacy and 
confusion. 

Strem/th. — We have. seen that our author's style has not the 
vigour of conciseness, precision, finished aptness of expression. 
His strength lies in quite an opposite direction : the style is 
jinimated and exhilarating from its rapidity and opulence of 
words and circumstances ; not from succinct and telling brevity, 
but from prodigal profusion. 

In every passage that we have quoted this has been conspicu- 
ously evident. Even in his technical works the unresting forward 
movement carries the reader away as on a rapid stream. Where 
the subject is hard and the thought difficult to follow, this irregular 
profusion grows bewildering ; but upon an easy theme, the speed 
and fulness of the tide is exhilarating. 

His design being usually didactic, it is chiefly in the illustrations 
and examples that he finds the greatest scope for the exhibition of 
his peculiar strength, i We shall see that in the choice of these 

1 With reference to this, De Quincey ranks Taylor amons the princes of 
rhetoric as opposcil to eloquence — rhetoric bein\,' the art of presenting a subject 
ill its most iiiipiising aspects, i-loqueiice the utterance of deep feeling on a sulyect 
of inlviusically-absorbiiig interest. 



284 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

extrinsic subjects he is ruled chiefly by the sentiment of tender- 
ness : as regards the sentiment of power, he inclines rather to the 
agitation autl excitement of horror than to cahn grandeur, or even 
to any form of might unattended with turbulence and danger. I 
speak only of ruling tendencies. I am aware that many examples 
of the telling description of beneficent powers might be quoted 
from his voluminous works. But, as a rule, in describing the 
operations of man or of nature, he chooses either objects of tender- 
ness, or objects of horror, or movements of the "wilder" character. 
Some examples may be quoted. For one of the " wilder" sort, 
we may refer to his animated description of the "boisterous north 
wind " (p. 280). As an instance of his piling up of circumstances 
of horror, take the following : — 

" Apollodorus was a traitor tind a tyrant, and the world wondered to see 
so bad a man have so good a Fortune, but knew not tliat he nonrislied scor- 
pions in his breast, and tliat liis liver and iiis heart were e:iten up with 
spectres and images of death ; his thoui^lits were full of interruptions, his 
dreams of illusions : his fancy was almscd witli real troubles anel fantastic 
images, imagining that he saw the Scythians Haying liim alive, his daugh- 
ters like )iillars of fire, dancing round about a cauldron in which himself 
was boiling, and that his heart accused itself to be the cause of all those 
evils." 

" Nature hatli given us one liarvest every year, but deatli hath two : and 
the sjiring and the autumn sends throngs of men and women to charnel- 
houses : and all the sununer long men are recovering from their evils of the 
spring, till the dog-days come, and then tlie Syrian star makes the sunnner 
deadly ; and the fruits of autinnn are laid up for all the year's iiro\i.^ion, and 
the man that gathers them ent-i and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, 
and himself is laid up for eternity ; and he that escapes till winter only stays 
for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to 
liim with great variety. Tluis death reigns in all the portions of our time. 
The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold 
turns them inio sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our 
hearse, and the summer gives green turf and braniljles to bind upon our 
graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the 
year, and all nnnister to death ; aud you cau go uo whither but you tread 
upon a dead man's bones." 

In the descrii)tion of the Day of Judgment, his imagination 
revels in elements of terror : — 

" Then all the beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the usual in- 
habitants of the sea, shall be gathered together, and make fearful noises to 
di■^tract mankind : the birds shall mourn and change their song iutothrenes 
aud sad accents ; rivers of fire shall rise from east to west, aud the stars shall 
be rent into threads of light, and scatter like the beanls of comets; then 
shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend in pieces, the trees 
shall distil blood, and the mountains and fairest structures shall return into 
their iirimitive dust ; the wild beasts shall leave their deus, aud shad come 
into the companies of men, so that you shall hardly tell how to call them, 
herds of men or congiegations of beasts ; then shall the graves open ami 
give up their dead, aud those which are alive in nature and dead in fear 



JEREMY TAYLOR, 2S5 

shall be forced from the rocks whither tliey went to hide them, and from 
caverns of the earth where they would fain have been coneealcd ; because 
their retirements are disinantleil and tlieir rocks are brol^en into wihier lup- 
tures, and admit a strani:;e li^ht into iheir secret bowels ; and the men iieing 
forced abroad into tlie tlieatre of mii^hty hoirois, shall rnn up and down dis- 
tracted, and at tlieir wits' end ; and then some shall die, and some sliall be 
chaiifjed ; and by this time the elect shall be gathered ti\^ether from the lour 
quarters of the world, and Christ shall come along with them to judgment." 

Pathos. — Tenderness is the ruling quality of Taylor's style — 
tenderness of a peculiar kind. Restless and hurried, be iias little 
of the tranquil melancholy of Sir Tliotuas Browne. He is quick 
and versatile, hurrying from circumstance to circum-stance, and 
from mood to mood. In accordance with this impetuosity, his 
expression of pity, atfection, and cljai'med sense of beauty is, as it 
were, demonstrative and voluble. At times he shows the most 
exquisite delicacy of feeling, at other times he dwells too long 
upon disgusting details, though seldom wiibout some redeeming 
touches ; but whatever be the mode of the feeling, tlie expression 
is always eager and impetuous, never lingering upon one circum- 
stance, but always hurrying ofi" to another. 

The following is a fair specimen of his versatile habit, and 
exemplifies the episodes of rare beauty that diversify passages of 
general gloom : — 

" It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it 
is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightl'iilness of youth 
and the fair cheeks and the full eyes of cliildhood, from tlie vigorousness 
and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-tweniy, to the hollowiiess and 
dead p;ileness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and 
we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very stiange. But 
so I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of his hood, and at 
first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's 
fleece: but when a rude breatli had forced ojien its virgin modesty, and 
dismantletl its too youthlul and unripe retirements, it began to put on dark- 
ness, and to decline to soltness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed 
the head, and broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves 
and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. The 
same is the portion of every maii and every woman ; the heiitiige of worms 
and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed, 
that onr acquaintance quickly know us not ; and that change mingled with 
so mucdi horror, or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings, tliat 
they who six hours ago tended upon ns, either witli charitable or aTubitious 
services, cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where the body 
lies stript of its life and honour. 1 have read of a fair young German gentle- 
man, who, living, often relused to be pictured, but juit off the imjiortunity 
of ills friends' desire by giving way that after a few days' burial ihey nught 
send a jiainter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw the image of 
his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his 
miiiritf and backbone full of serpents; and so be stands pictured amongst 
his armeil ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as 
bad witii j'ou and me ; and then, what servants shall we have to wait upon 
us iu the grave ? what friends to visit us? what ollicious people to cleanse 



286 FROM 1G40 TO 1670. 

away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our fares from the 
sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our fuueral?" 

The 'Holy Dying,' which sets forth all the miseries of the 
human lot as an inducement^ "to look somewhere else for an 
abiding city," is full of touching pity. The two following ex- 
amples are among the best passages, being less disfigured with 
horrors than others that might be quoted: in both we mark the 
volubility already spoken of : — 

"The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a hroken tahle from the 
fuiies of a shii>wree'k, as he Wiis svnining himself upon tiie rocky sliore, 
espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in 
the folds of his g.irnieut, and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the 
shore to find a grave : and it cast him into some sad thoughts : Tnat per- 
adventure this man's wife in some part of the coiitinent, safe and warm, 
looks next month for the good man's safe return : or it m;iy he his son 
knows notliing of the tempest ; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss 
■whicii still is waim upon the good old man's cheek ever since he took a kind 
farewell, and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his 
beloved boy returns into the circle of his father's arms. These are the 
thonglits of mortals, this the end and sum of all their designs : a dark 
night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, a hard rock 
and a rough wind thished in pieces the fnrtune of a whole family, ami they 
that shall weep loudest fur the accident are not yet entered into the stormj 
and yet have suffered shi[)wreck." 

" A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man 
preached, if he shall but entei- into the sepulrhres of kings. In the same 
EscurJal where the Spanish jninces live in greatness ami power, and decree 
war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their aslies and 
tlieir glory sb.all sleep till time shall be no more -. and where our kings 
have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over 
their gi-andsire's h^ad to take his crown. Tliere is an acie sown witli royal 
seed, tiie copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs 
to arched cottins, tVoni living like goils to die like men. There is enough to 
cool the flame of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to apjiease the itch ot 
covftous desires, to sully and da^h out the dissembling colours of a lustful, 
artiiici.il, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, and 
the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle 
their dust and pay down their synibol of mortalitv, and tell all the wo'-jd 
that, when we die, our ashes shall be equnl to kings', and our accounts 
easier, and our pains lor our crowns shall be less." . 

ISIuch of his pathos is not mournful, but consists of the ex- 
pression of tenderness for objects of beauty and affection. Most 
of his natural similitudes are of this character. He has a keen 
sense of the bright fresh pleasure of the eye. "The young man 
dances like a bubble empty and gay, and shines like a dove's 
neck, or the image of a rainbow j " drizzling rain-drops are "the 
descending pearls of a misty morning." In like manner he 
speaks with delight of " the beauty of the peacock's train, or 
the ostrich-plume," and of children " making garlands of useless 

1 See p. 288. 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 287 

daisies." In a passage already quoted lie compares a procession 
of clouds to "an army wiili bauiierri." His love for bright young 
children, and fresh but fragile natural things, is a kindred vein of 
sentiment : — 

"Every little tiling can Mast an infant blo.ssom ; and tho hrcatli of the 
south can shake tlie liltle rings of tlie vine when tirst tliey bciiiii to curl like 
the loeks (if a ne\v-\ve;iiied b ly : but wlieu by age and consolidaiion they 
Rtitfen inli) the hardne.ss of a .stem, and iiave, by the warm enibraies of lh« 
sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, thej' can endure 
the ftorius of the north and the loud noises of a tempest and yet never be 
broken." 

" For so have I seen a lark rising from liis bed of grass, and soaring up- 
wards, singing as he rises and hopes to get to lieaven, and climb above the 
clouds; but the poor bird was heaten back with the loud sighings of an 
eastern wiml, ami his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending 
more at every breath of the tempest, than it cnuld recover by tlie libratioii 
and frequent weighing of Ids wings ; till the little creature was forced to sit 
down and pant, ami stay till the storm was over ; and then it made a pros- 
perous Might, and <lid rise and sing, as if it had Irarncd music and motion 
from an amjel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries 
lure below." 

KINDS OF COMrOSITION. 

Description. — Taylor never attempts the formal description of 
landscnpe ; and, we can siippnse, from what we know of his 
irregular genius, that, if he had done so, his method -.vouid have 
been the reverse of perspicuous. It is well, however, in consider- 
ing his style as api^lied to special modes of composition, to bear in 
mind his peculiar turn for accumulating picturesc]ue circumstances. 
He possessed the love of nature that prompts to description, and 
had descriptive style been developed in his day, would probably 
have been among its masters. 

Exposition. — Nothing need be added to what we have said in 
explaining his want of simplicity and clearness. He repeats a 
proi»osition again and again in an irregular fashion, in his own 
words and in the words of favourite authorities, intermingling his 
repeate 1 statements with copious exemplification and illustration. 
His fault is the want of method ; he is wastefully copious in all 
the means of exposition, if only he could have employed them oa 
a Letter plan. 

Persuasion. — As a moral orator he is not by any means effective. 
De Quincey, as we have said, considers that Taylor has carried ofl 
the highest htmours of rhetoric ; and he defines his peculiar mean- 
ing of rhetoiic by saying that where conviction begins, the jjrovince 
of rhetoric end.s, irai)lying that the object of what he understands by 
rhetoric is to excite admiiation rather than conviction. Whatever 
may be thought of the restriction of the term rhetoric to so narrow 
a signification, this is a good way of expressing the effect of Tay- 



288 rr.OM 1640 to 1670. 

lor's professed treatises on practical ethics. In the 'Holy Dyin^' 
we never tire of admiring the wide-ranging schnlarship and the 
dazzling accumulation of instances, imagery, and circumstances; 
but the application is almost lost in the general blaze. 

The truth is, that in these professedly practical treatises our 
author handles the subject moro as a poet than as a moral 
preacher. 

In the representation of misery, the end of the moral preacher 
is not only different from the end of the poet, but positively 
antagonistic. The preacher's vocation is to rouse our activities, 
to excite strenuous endeavour ; the vocation of the poet is to 
gratify our feelings, — rather to make us weep over misery than to 
make us anxious for the relief of actual sufferers. 

Now the effect of Taylor's representation of misery is poetical 
rather than practical. Dilating on the vanity and shortness of 
man's life, he represents " the thousand thousands of accidents in 
this world, and every contingency to every man and every crea- 
ture." The reader asks whether this is not practical 1 whether it 
is not the most powerful means of urging us to imj^rove our time 1 
True, it might be so aiiplied ; but the application is not made by 
Taylor. He pictures the contingencies of the human lot in such 
a way as to put us into a brooding melancholy. He presents 
an array of unavoidable fatal possibilities — disease, shipwreck, 
unforeseen accident ; ^ and by presenting them as unavoidable, at 
once quenches every motive to action. The etVect upon realers 
that should give themselves up to the spirit of the preacher would 
be despair and horror, were it not that he mingles the dismal 
'catalogue with expressions of pity, moves our tender feelings by 
painting the sorrow of friends over the unfortunate dead, and 
dwells upon the consolation of another and a better world. To 
be sure, he professes to "reduce these considerations" (of uni- 
versal fatality) "to practice;" but the section that undertakes 
to do so is, in fact, another tale of possible misfortunes, the same 
" scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in circum- 
stances." ^ He has formal heads of practical rules and considera- 
tions ; but how far these exhortations are from being stimulating 
and practical, and what exquisite touches of poetry they contain, 
may be seen in the following example : — 

" 2. Let no man extend his thoughts, or let ^is hopes wander towards 
future and far-distant events and accidental coiitini,'encies. This day is 
mine and yonrs, but ye know not what shall be on the viorrovj ; and every 
morning creeps out of a dnrk cloud, leavino behind it an ignorance and 
silence deep as midnight, and undiscerned as are tlie phantasms that make 
a crysonie cliild to smile ; so that we cannot discern wliat comes hereafter, 
unless we had a light from heaven brighter than the vision of an angel, even 

* See p. 284. 2 See p. 285, 



ABKAITAM COWLEY. 289 

tlie spirit of prophecy. Witliout revelation we cannot tell whether we shall 
eat to-tiiorrow, or whether a .squiiiaiicy shall choke lis: anil it is written in 
tlie unrevealed folds of divine predestination, that many who are this day 
alive sIihII to-morrow be laid npon the cohi earth, and the women shall weep 
over their slu'oud, and dress ^leni for their funeral." 

Such passages are certainly not tlie considerati<ins that brace the 
moral energies. They tend rather to lower the moral tone, to 
throw the mind into a despmidency ; — a mournfully pleasing 
state, jjerhaps, but undoubtedly enervating. From the point of 
view of the poet, the above would be admirable if it were weeded 
of the coarse expression about the squinancy ; from the point of 
view of the moral preacher,^ it is not only useless, but positively 
harmful. 

ABRAHAM COWLEY, 1618-1667. 

Cowley holds perhaps a higher rank among prose writers th in 
among poets. His Essays, written for the most part after the 
Eestoration, mark an advance in the art of prose composition. 
The construction of the sentences is often «tuml ling and awkward, 
but the diction shows an increasing command over the language. 
No previous writer, not even Fuller, is so felicitous as Cowley in 
the combination of words. His prose has none of the extravagance 
of his poetry. "No author," says Johnson, "ever kept his verse 
and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts 
are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which 
has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far- 
sought or hard-laboured ; but all is easy without feebleness, and 
familiar without grossness." 

Perhaps part of the explanation of this is, that for ten years he 
conducted the correspondence of the exiled royal family — a kind 
of experience likely to purify his language both from bookish 
terms and from jtoetical ornaments. Whatever be the reason, his 
comiiinations and turns of exjiression are remarkably modern; 
here and there short passages might be quoted that we should 
not be surprised to find in 'Blackwood' or in the 'Saturday 
Eeview.' 

He was born in London, the son of a grocer ("his parents 
citizens of a virtuous life and sufficient estate"), and educated at 
Westminster school and at Trinity (^oUege, Cambridge. At the 
age of fifteen he had jiublished a volume of poems ; and while yet 
an undergraduate, he wrote two or three comedies, and the greater 
part of his ' Davideis.* When he had been seven years at Cam- 

1 Throughout the ahove we have used the word preacher as a preacher of moral 
coiuhict. It is not implied tliat moral iireaching is the sole finiction of flie 
pulpit. Another function is to console the wretched under tlieir load of miser 
ies. As a preacher of consolation our author is perhaps unrivalled. 

T 



290 FKOM 1G4() TO 1670. 

bridge, and had proceeded to the degree of M.A., he was, in 1643, 
at the age of twenty-five, ejected from that university by the 
Puritan visitors, and took refuge in Oxford. "About the time 
when Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed the 
Queen to Paris, wheie he became secretary to the Lord Jerrayn, 
afterwards Earl of iSt Albans, and was employed in such corre- 
spondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in cipher- 
ing and deciphering the letters that passed between the King and. 
Queen — an ein])!oymcnt of the highest confidence and honour. So 
wide was the province of his intelligence, that for several years it 
filled all his days and two or three nights in the week." In 1656 
he returned to England, was arrested, liberated on bail, studied 
medicine, and tonk out a degree in 1657. He remained in London 
till Cromwell's death, suspected of being in secret communication 
with the exiled family. At the Restoration he was rewarded with 
a free lease of certain hinds, yielding a rental of ;^3oo, and went 
to reside at Chertsea. 

He found country life very different from his Arcadian ideal; 
but that he was positively unhappy in his solitude, we have no 
reason to believe. The letter to I)v Sprat that Johnson produces 
with a malicious chuckle, " for the consideration of all that may 
hereafter jiaiit for solitude," is really a humorous caricature of his 
sufferings, evidently written in high spirits. 

His prose remains are few; he considered "a little tomb of 
marble a better monument than a vast heap of stones and rub- 
bish." Two prefaces, a short ''Proposition for the Advancement 
of Experimental Philosophy," a " Discourse by way of Vision, 
concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell," and eleven 
Essays, are the suni-tot;d, and they are contained in a small 
volume. 

We get no fair idea of Cowley's intellectual powers from read- 
ing merely his prose. There we are struck only by his singular 
ease in choosing ai>t words, and by the freshness and spirit of the 
combinations. In his poetry he is more "extravagant and Pin- 
darical"; the predominating veins of sentiment are the same as 
M^e find in the Essays and the Discourse on Cromwell, but he gives 
a fuller licence to his ingenuity. Describing the style of the 
"metaphysical poets," Johnson says — "The most heterogeneous 
ideas are yoked by violence together ; nature and art are ransacked 
for illustrations, comi)ariso«s, and allusions; their learning in- 
structs, and their subtilty surprises : " and among the metaphysical 
poets he considers Cowley to be "undoubtedly the best." This 
implies no mean powers of intellect; yet we should not think of 
placing such a light horseman among the intellectual giants. He 
is entitled to the palm of fantastic breadth, swiftness, and subtlety 
of wit ; and this was pi'obably all the distinction that he coveted. 



ABRAHAM COWLEY. 291 

Indeed the soft easy nature of the man indisposed him to severe 
labour, whether of body or of mind. " Whatever was his subject, 
he seems to have been carried by a kind of destiny to the light 
and the familiar, or to conceits whicli require still more ignoble 
epithets." Even in his emotions he was eas}^ and averse to excite- 
ment. He Wiis not of an overflowing sociability, like Thomas 
Fuller; his ideal was to enjoy tlie company of a few friends in 
some "gentle cool retreat from ail the immoderate heat in which 
the frantic world does burn and sweat." He never married; and 
his poems express no depth of aflFcctio!i : the only genuine pathos 
in his writings flows from his luxurious love of solitude and repose. 
Neither his prose nor his poetry gives evidence of strong anti- 
pathies : we shall quote some sharj) invective, but it is not personal, 
— it is directed against abstractions. He loved to contemplate, in 
a soft indolent attitude, the sjiectacle of great power; royalist as 
he was, he could not refrain from admiring Cromwell. At the 
same time he would not, like Carlyle, have put himself to the 
trouble of searching the world for heroes ; only when a hero conies 
across his jiath, he is not impervious to astonishment. Even in 
his admiration of Cromwell there is no depth of feeling ; the rich 
and elevated language of the Discourse on that hero is dashed 
with touches of humour. He has none of Taylor's fresh delight 
in natural things : as Johnson says, he does not piesent pictures 
to the mind; he "gives inferences instead of images, and shows 
not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thouglits 
the sight might have suggested." 

In his younger days he wrote what he calls " a shrewd prophecy 
against himself " : — 

'* Tliou neitlicr great at coin-t, nor in the war, 
Nor at tlie exchange shall be, nor at the wrangling bar." 

The prophecy was shrewd enough ; such a born epicurean was not 
likely to succeed in any mode of active life. As a myal secretary 
he probably discharged his duty sufficiently well, having the mate- 
rial furni.shed him, and experient;ing none of the worry of contriv- 
ing ; but that he was not a particularly zealous and active servant 
is probably shown by the conqtaratively slender reward settled 
upon him at the Restoration. Of his natural indolence we have a 
very pretty evidence in his Essays. When he retired to the coun- 
try, he says there was nothing he coveted so much as a small house 
and a large garden, where he might work and study nature ; yet 
he confesses, " I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden, 
among weeds and rubbish, and without that pleasantest work of 
human industry, the improvement of something which we call (not 
very {)r. 'perly, but yet we call) our own." 

Cowley being neither a man of action, nor a moralist, nor a 



292 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

critic, nor an oriirinal student of science,^ his opinions are not of 
consequence ; in his humorous railing at ambition and advocacy of 
retirement, he is moved entirely by constitutional sentiment. The 
popularity of his Essays is a great tribute to the intrinsic power 
of style, — of manner as opposed to matter. It also indicates that 
style can operate to most advantage when neither reader nor writer 
is impeded by difficu'ties in the matter. 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — In his prose writings, the extent of his vocabulary 
is shown rather by skilful choice of words thau by Shakspearian 
profusion. When \^■e turn to his poetry, we see that his command 
of words, though great, is rather inferior for a writer of such 
reputation. The exertion of procuring variety Avould seem to have 
beeu too much for his easy temperaineut ; and his range of emotion 
being so limited, he did not accumulate great stores of language 
except in the region of the light and familiar. 

We have already said that his diction is noticeably less archaic 
than the diction of any preceding writer. 

fientences. — -In his lighter compositions the sentence-structure is 
easy and careless, and has no marked rhythm. But in his seri'ius 
writings the rhythm is more even. The preface to his poems 
published in 1656, and the Discourse on Cromwell, are written 
with a more even measure than any compositions prior to this 
date. 

Ill Cowley we first notice very markedly the habit of adding to 
tlie simple statement an obverse or inverse statement, for the pur- 
pose of tilling out the cadence. Thus, as an example of the obverse 
filling out : — 

' Tlie Churcli of Rome, with all her arrogance, and her wide pretences of 
certainty in all truths, and exemption from all errors, does not clap on this 
enchanted armour of infallibility ui)on all her particular subjects, nor is 
offended at the reproof of her greatest doctors." 

As an example of the inverse filling out : — 

" A cowardly ranting soldier, an ignorant charlatanical doctor, a foolisn 
cheating lawyer, a silly pedautical scholar, have alwa3's been, and still are, 
the principal subjects of all comedies, witliout any scandal given to those 
honourable professions, or even taken by Uieir severest prof essors." 

These are not perhaps the best examples that might be selected, 
but they illustrate what is meant ; other cases will ajjpear in sub- 
sequent quotations. 

Wliile in Cowley we see the first extensive use of balanced yet 
idiomatic periods, and the first habitual practice of the chief arts 

I His "Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy" is 
merely a j luu of a college and school, and contains uotliing remarkaLle. 



ABRAHAM COWLEY. 293 

of rhythmical balance, we must observe that measured structure 
and i)oint are employed by him much more sparingly than by their 
great cultivator, ISamuel Johnson. His rhythm is more varie 1, in 
this respect approaching nearer to the modern standard. Apart 
from an occasional weakness in the syntax, and a certain archaism 
in the phrase and in the thought, the following reads not unlike a 
good article in the ' Saturday Iveview ' i : — 

"As for all otlier objections, \vliich liave been or maybe made against the 
invention or elucution, or anything else which comes under the ciitic;il juris- 
diction ; let it stand or fall as it can answer for itself, for 1 do not lay the 
gi-eat stress of my reputation upon a structure ol this nature, much less upon 
the sliglit r('par:itic)us only of an old and unfii>hionahle building. There is 
no writer but may fail sotuetiuiis in point of wit ; and it is no less frcijueut 
for the auditois to fail in point of judgment. I perceive plainly, by daily 
experience, that Fortune is mistress ot the theatre, as Tuily says it is of all 
popular assemblies. No man can tell sometimes from whence the invisible 
winds rise that move them. Tliere are a multituile of people, who are truly 
and only spectators at a play, without any use of their understanding ; and 
these carry it sometimes by the strength of their numbers. There are others 
who Use their understandings too much ; who think it a sign of weakness 
and stupidity to let anything pass by them unattacked, and that the honour 
of their judgments (as some brutals imagine of their courage) consists in 
quarrelling with eveiythiiig. We are therefore wonderful wise men, and 
have a fuie business of it, we who spend onr time in po(!try : 1 do sometimes 
laugh, and am often angry with myself when I think on it ; and if I had a 
son inclined by nature t<; the same folly, I believe I should bind him from 
it by the strictest conjurations of a jiaternal blessing. For what can bo 
more ridi<ulous, than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on 
their part, more earnestly to take offence? To expose one's self voluntarily 
and frankly to all the dangers of that narrow passage to unprofitable fame, 
which is defended by rude multitudes of the ignorant, and by armed troops 
of the malicious ? If we do ill, many discover it, and all despise us ; if we 
do well, but few men find it out, and fewer entertain it kindly. If we com- 
mit errors, there is no pardon ; if we could do wonders, there would be but 
little thanks, and that, too. extorted from unwilling givers." 

The Paragraph structure, in the lighter essays, where there are 
no natural divisions in the subject-matter, is loose and rami ding. 
In the Prefaces, when he has distinct topics to handle, such as 
different books of poetiy, he naturally places them in separate 
paragraphs ; but when there is no such marked guide, he is not 
more orderly than the looser sort of his predecessors, and often 
mixes up several sulijccts in the same jjaragrai^h. In the 'Crom- 
well,' the natural pauses in the How of his declamation suggest 
paragraph breaks, and the sense of oratorical effect prevents 
rambling. 

Figures of Speech — Fantastic similitudes are almost the essence 

of Cowley's poetry ; in his i)rose he is less exuberant. His prose, 

indeed, is less ornate tliau any line writing of the century, )irior, at 

least, to his own date; the similitudes are not quite so numerous, 

1 From the Preface to 'The Cutter of Coleman Street.' 



294 FROM 1C40 TO 1670. 

and they are not far-fetched, but seem to come ensily to Land, 
Examples will be seen in the quotations that follow. In the 
Essays, which are familiar productions, he admits more embel- 
lishment than in the Prefaces or the Discourse ; in the serious com- 
positions, he gives his care to elaborate the plain statement of 
striking circumstances. 

In declamatory passages he makes abundant use of the figures 
Exclamation and Interrogation. These will be exemplified under 
the head of Strength. 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. — The subjects of the Essays are easy. Upon ambi- 
tion, obscurity, procrastination, and suchlike, a writer can hardly 
produce new ideas ; all his powers may be given to producing new 
turns of expression, illustrative anecdotes, historical allusions. If 
he is abstruse, the abstruseness must be wholly in the expres'^ion. 

Cowley's treatment of his subjects is gay rather than grave, and 
the expression is easy and sprightly. He quotes a good deal of 
Latin, but he makes his quotations with a grace, and, apologising 
for " the pedantry of a heap of Latin sentences," provides us in 
most cases with fluent translations. The following on the Danger 
of Procrastination is a fair specimen : — • 

"A gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by 
the enemy, was taken prisoner, and lost his lite afterwards, only by staying 
to put on a band, and adjust his periwig ;" he would escape like a person of 
quality or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. 
I tliink your counsel of ' Festina lente ' ^ is as ill to a ujan who is tiyiug 
from the world, as it would have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentle- 
man, who was so cautious as not to fly nmiecentiy from his enemies; and 
therefore I prefer Horace's advice before yours — 

Sapere aude, 
Incipe — 3 

Begin ; the getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey. Varro 
teaches us that Latin proverb : . . . but to returu to Horace — 

Begin ; be bold, and venture to be wise ; 

He who defers this work from day to day, 

Does on a river's bank exjieeting stay, 

Till the whole stream, which stopt him, should be gone, 

That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. 

Caesar (the man of expedition above all others) was so far from this folly, 
tlwt whensoever, in a journey, he was to cross any river, he never went 
one foot out of his way fur a bridge, or a ford, or a ferry; but tlung him- 
self into it immediately, and swam over : and this is tlie course we ouglit 
to imitate, if we meet with any stops in our way to happiness. Stay, till the 
waters are low ; stay, till some boats come by to transport you ; stay, till a 
bridge be built for you : you had even as good stay, till the river be quite 



i[:: 



Take it easy ; " lit. " Hasten slowly."] 
Have the courage to be wise, — begin. "] 



ABRAHAM COWLEY. 295 

past. PiTsins (who, you use to say, you do not know whether he be a 
good poft or no, because you c;uin(it u>i<ler.stiind him, and whom, therefore, 
1 say, I know to he imt a ^'ood jioet) has an odd expression of these pro- 
crasliuators, which, methinks, is lull of fancy — 

Our yesterday's to-morrow now is c;oTie, 
And still a new to-nuirrow does eoiiie on; 
Wt- by to-inor)ows draw up all our s'ore. 
Till the exhausted well can yield no more. 

" And now, I think, I am even with you, for your ' Otium cum dignitate,' 
and 'Fistina Icnte,' and three or four other more of your new Latin sen- 
tences ; if I should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca and Plutarch 
upon tliis subject, 1 shouhl overwhelm you ; but 1 leave those, as 2'riarii, 
for your next cliarsje. I sliall only give you now a lii^ht skirmish out of an 
eidgrammatibt, your sjiecial good iViend ; and so, vale." 

The above exemplifies the simple style of his familiar essays ; 
we shall see that even in his most ambitious declamatiuns there is 
a peculiar lightness and ease, a singular absence of stiffness and 
constraint. 

Stren(ith. — The passage just quoted from the Essays is an example 
of our author's sprightliness and animation. The passage quoted 
before to show how modern his expression is, exemplifies animation 
in a more serious vein, the animation of finished bievity and point. 

Tn some parts of his Prefaces, and throughout the Discourse on 
Cromwell, he assumes a loftier tone of declamation. Some of 
these declamatory ])assages are highly finished. One of the finest 
of them, the summary of the striking paradoxes in the career of 
Cromwell, is quoted and analj'sed in Bain's ' Rhetoric' In some 
remarks upon the ' Davideis,' he presents the fortunes of David in 
tlie same striking form, though the contrasts are not portrayed at 
the same length : — 

"What wortliier suhjert could have been chosen, among all the treasuries 
of past times, than the life of tliis young prince, who from so small begin- 
nings, through such infinite troubles and oppositions, by such miraculous 
virtues aiul excellencies, and with such incomparable vaiiety of wonderful 
actions and acciiients, became tlie greatest monarch that ever sat on the 
most famous throne of tlie whole earth ? " 

His plea for dramatising the characters and incidents of the Old 
Testament, being an apology for his own practice, is written with 
all his powers of style. After enumerating the dramatic elements 
in the life of David, he continues : — 

"What can we iuiagine more ]iroper for the ornaments of wit or learning 
in the story of Deucalion, th:in in that of Noah ? Wliy will not the actions 
of Simpson alj'ord as plentiful matter as the laliours of Heicnles? AVliy is 
not Jepliiha's daugliter as gnod a woman as Iphigenia? and the friendship 
of David and Jonathan more worthy celebration than that of Theseus and 
Pirithous ? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into tlie Holy 
Land yield incomparably more i^oetical variety than tlie voyages of Ulysses 
or ^ueas ? Are the obsolete threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy ludi so 



296 FROM 1640 TO 1G70. 

stored with great, heroical, and snpernatural actions (since verse will needs 
find or njake such) as the wars of Joshua, of the Judges, of David, and divers 
others? Can all tlie traiisfoiraations of the gods give such copious hints to 
flourish and expatiate on, as the true miracles of Clirist, or of H s j)ro])liet3 
and apostles? Why do I instance in these few particulars? All the books 
of the Bible are eitlier already most adniiiable and exalted pieces of p-«sy, 
or are the best materials in the world for it." 

Perhaps the most effective piece of rlietoric in all his composition 
is the passage beginning with the simile of " Jack in the ch)ck- 
house." The melodious solemnity of the rhythm, the vigour and 
propriety of the language, the fine similes, and the imposing 
examples, exhibit probably the utmost stretch of the author's 
power : — 

"I have often observed (with all sulimission and resignation of spirit to 
the inscrutable niysteiies of Eternal Providence) that, when the fulness and 
maturity of time is come, that produces the great confusions and changes iu 
the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them, 
that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine 
justice and yu'edestiiiation ; and, though we see a man, like that which we 
call Jack of the clock-h()U>e, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of 
time, yet our reason must needs be convinced that his hand is moved by 
some secret, and, to ns who stand without, invisible diiection. And the 
stream of the current is then so violent, that the strongest men in the world 
cannot draw up against it; and none are so weak but they may sail down 
with it. These are the spring tides of public affairs, which we see often 
happen, but seek in vain to discover any certain causes. And one man 
then, by Tualiciously opening all the sluices tiiat he can come at, can never 
be the sole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he 
were by intending and imagining to be so) ; but it is God that breaks up 
the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then, and industry of 
mankind, is not suthcient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In 
such a time, it was, as this, that not all the wisdom and power of the Roman 
senate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor the courage and virtue of 
Brutus, was able to defend their country, or themselves, against the unex- 
perienced rashness of a beardless boy, and the loose rage of a voluptuous 
madman. Tlie valour, and prudent counsels, on the one side, are made 
fruitless, and the errors, and cowardice, on the other, harmless, by unex- 
pected accidents. The one general saves his life and gains the whole world, 
by a very dream ; and the other loses both at once, by a little mistake of 
the shortness of his sight. And though this be not always so, for we see 
that, in the translation of the great monarchies from one to another, it 
pleased God to make choice of the most eminent men in nature, as Cyrus, 
Alexander, Scipio, and his contemporaries, for his chief instruments, and 
actdis, in so admirable a work (the end of this being, not only to destroy or 
punish one nation, which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to 
exalt and bless another, which is only to be effected by gieat and virtuous 
persons); j'et, when God only intends the temporary chastisement of a 
peo]>le, be does not raise up his servant Cyrus (as he himself is pleased to 
call hiu)), or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good, as vices to 
do harm) ; but he makes the JSIassaniellos, and the Johns of Leyden, the 
instruments of his vengeance, tliat the power of the Almighty nn'ght be 
more evident by the weakness of the means w hich he chooses to demonstrate 
it. He did not assemble the serpents, and the niou.sters of Afric, to correct 



ABKAHAM COWLEY. 297 

the pride of the Eg\ ptinns ; hut called for his ;iniiies of locusts out of Mthi- 
opia, and formed new ones of vermin out of tlie very dust ; and, hee;nise 
you see a whole country destroyed by the>e, will you argue troni tlience 
they must needs have had botli the craft of foxes, and the courage of 
lious ? " 

Wit and Humour. — Wit and humour are undoubtedly the ruling 
features of Cowley's ))rose. His ridicule is for the nicst part gay 
and genial. Here and there we meet with passages of keen satire ; 
but there is nothing ap[)roaching to i)ersonal spleen in his sar- 
casms. In his bitterest shots at Cromwell, he keeps in view 
lather what he su[)posed to be Cromwell's vices — tyrannous am- 
bition and hypocrisy. The man himself he admits to be an extra- 
ordinary person, and professes to look upon Idm with no greater 
animosity than upon Marius or Sylla. Besides, the invective is 
supposed to be delivered in a dream, and to the face of a terrible 
angel professing to be an admirer of the late Lord Protector. The 
circumstances are managed with a kind of comic effect ; and, keet> 
ing in mind the situation, we see the most bitter invective through 
a humorous medium. 

As an example of his powers of sarcastic irony, take the follow- 
ing lu dcrously unexpected banter by the terrible apparition, the 
"North- West Principality." Cowley had been proceeding in a 
full tide of denunciation, accusing Cromwell of tyranny, craft, 
and other crimes : — 

"Here I stopt ; and my pretended protector, who, I expected, sliould 
have been very angry, fell a-huigliing ; it seems at the siinplirity of my <iis- 
course, for thus he replied: 'You seem to pretend exireniely to the old 
obsolete rules of virtue and conseience, whieh makes me doul)t veiy nnich, 
whether, from this vast prospect of three kingdoms, you can show me any 
acres of your own. But these are so far from making you a prince, that I 
am afr;iid your fiiends will never have the contentment to see you so much 
as a justice of pence iu your own eountiy. For this, I perceive, which you 
call virtue, is nothing else but either the tbrwardness of a Cynic, or the 
laziness of an Epicurean. I am glad yon allow me at least artful di-siiiiula- 
tion. and unwearied diligence in my hero ; and I assure you that he, whose 
life is eon.stantly drawn by these two, shall never be misled out of the way 
of gnatuess. But I see you are a pedant, and I'latonieal statesman, a tlieo- 
retual commonwealth's-man, an Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches gotten 
by your golden mediocrities ? or the sujireme ])lace attained to by virtues 
that must not stir out of the middle? Do you stiuly Ari.^totle's polities, 
and write, if you please, comments upon tluni ; and let another but practise 
Maehiavel : and let us see, then, which of you two will come to the greatest 
preferments. If the desire of rule and superiority,' " &c. 

The satire of the Essays is never long kept up ; some good- 
humoured familiarity of expression comes in after a short passage 
of keener language, and puts us into a humorous mood by reveal- 
ing the easy unexcited temper of the satirist. Thus, iu the Essay 
on Obscurity : — 



298 FEOM 1G40 TO 1670. 

" If we enjjnge into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set 
open our gates to llie invaiiers of most of our time : we expose our life to a 
quotiiliuu ague of frigid impertiuencies, which would mal<e a wise man 
tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight and pointed 
at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that: whatsoever it be, 
every mountebank has it inme than the best doctor, and the hanmnan more 
than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature 
and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, ' This is that 
Bucephalus,' or 'This is that Incitatus,'*^ when they wei'e led prancing 
through the streets, as ' This is that Alexander,' or ' This is that Douii- 
tian ;' and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more 
honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship, than 
he the empire." 

He can be humorous at his own expense, as in the description 
of his country experiences : — 

"One would think that all mankind had bound themselves by an oath 
to do all the wickedness they can ; that they had all (as the Scripture 
speaks) sold themselves to sin: the difference only is, that some are a little 
more craffy (and but a little, God knows) in making of the bargain. I 
thought, when I went first to dwell in the country, that, without doubt, I 
should have met tliere with the simplicity of the old poetical golden age ; I 
thoui,dit to have found no inhabitants there, but such as the shepheids of 
Sir Philip Sidney in Arcadia, or of Monsieur d'Urfe, upon the banks of 
Lignon ; and began to consider with myself, which way I might recommend 
no less to posterity the happiness and innocence of the men ofChertsea; 
but to confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations, 
that I was still in Old Eni,dand, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest ; that, 
if I could not content myself with anything less than exact fidelity in human 
conversation, I had almost as good go back and seek for it in the Court, or 
the Exchange, or Westminster-hall. 1 ask again then, whither shall we fly, 
or what shall we do ?" 

The Essay on Agriculture is written in his happiest vein. He 
searches out tlie authorities for the dignity of agricultural life 
with great pleasantry : — 

" From Homer, we must not expect much concerning our afl'airs. He 
was blind, and could neither work in the country, nor enjoy the pleasuies 
of it ; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sustained in the richest places; 
lie was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of 
their ancestors ; his snlject removed him from all commerce with us, and 
yet, methinks, he made a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though 
he could do us no honour in the person of Ids hero Ulysses (much less of 
Achilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages; yet 
he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking liis con- 
solation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting, and even 
dunging his own grounds. Ye see, he did not contemn us ]ieasants ; nay, 
BO far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Euiu:eus, who kept 
the hogs, with wonderful respect, ^~tov vcpop^ou, the divine swiue-herd : he 
could have done no more for Mendaus or Agamemnon." 

OTHER "WRITERS. 

The justification of departing from the usual chronological 
arrangement, which dates a period from the Restoration, is that 



THEOLOGY. 299 

by the present arrangement we get a more compact grouping of 
our authors relatively to the great Rebelliiin. l]y annexing to 
the jieriod of the Commonwealth the first ten years of the reign 
of Charles II., we bind together those that wrote during the 
agitation of the political storm, and those whose literary activity 
was greatest, indeed, when that storm was laid, but whose thoughts 
and style were powerfully influenced by the experience of their 
early manhood, iind who belong in every way to the generation of 
the Commonwealth. 

The writers of the Commonwealth — and they are remarkably 
numerous — may, indeed, be divided into three classes: recluse 
or easy-tempered students, like Thomas Browne and Fuller, who 
were hardly influenced at all by the suriounding excitement ; 
men of bold speech, like Milton, who made their voices heard in 
the strife; and men, like Cowley, who composed their works 
when the agitation had subsided. The division is more a loose 
help to the understanding and the memory than one that can 
be marked out with sharp and clear lines: it makes an interesting 
distribution of a few great men, and it is so far a clue to their 
character ; but it cannot be made a ]Minciple of classification for 
the mass of writers without leading to unprofitable refinements. 
We here follow the same plan as for the other periods. 

THEOLOGY. 

Hall, Hales, and Chillingworth, all survived into this period. 
The Church of England boasted also two of her mo>t famous 
divines, Robert Sanderson (15S7-1663), and John Pearson (1613- 
1686). At the outlueak of the Civil War, Sanderson Avas Kegius 
Trofissor of Divinity at Oxford, Canon of Christ Church, and a 
roviil chaplain. Upon the Restoration he was appointed Bishop 
of Lincoln, and he was one of the commissioners at the Savoy 
Conference in i66i. His princii>al work in English is 'Nine 
Cases of Conscience.' He is the chief of Protestant casuists. 
Pearson, who after the Pvestoration succeeded Dr Wilkins in the 
Mastership of Trinity and in the see of Chester, published in 1659 
an 'Exposition of the Creed,' which still holds its ground as a 
standard production. The work is laborious, calm, and acute, 
written in simple and clear language; it follows the easy arrange- 
ment of taking each word in order. He was profoundly versed in 
patristic literature; and in that department criticised \\ith such 
acuteness that Bentley said " his very dross was gold." 

The most eminent of the Nonconforming divines of this gene- 
ration was Richard Baxter (1615-1691). He was ordained in the 
Chureh of England, and at the beginning of the Civil War was 
pastor of Kidderminster. He sided with the Parliament, was 



300 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

attached as chaplain to a regiment, and saw some active service ; 
but his health failing, he returned to his pastoral charge, anil 
buried himself in study. In this retirement he wrote the 'Saint's 
Everlasting Rest,' a volume of pious thoughts that have a peculiar 
Interest when we view them as the aspirations of an infirm man 
turning wearily from the distractions of a time so utterly out of 
joint. The violent breaking to pieces of the old monarchy and 
the usurpation of Cromwell were painfid things to a man thirsting 
for quiet and security ; and in a celebrated interview with the 
Protector he had the courage to remonstrate. After the Restora- 
tion he was offered a bishopric, but declined the offer. Subse- 
quently, when penal enactments were passed against Dissenters, 
his quiet ministrations in London were interfered with, and he 
was exposed to considerable hardships. At last, in 16S5, he was 
thrown into prison, taken before the infamous Judge Jeffreys, and 
shamefully bullied : he was released by the special intervention of 
the King. All his life through he was an indefatigable writer : of 
his multitudinous works, numbering in all 168, only the 'Saint's 
Rest ' and the ' Call to the Unconverted * have had a durable popu- 
larity. His autobiography — ' Memorable Passages of my Life and 
Times' — affords an interesting picture of an ardent impulsive 
nature tamed down by rude experience and infirm health to 
greater sobriety of judgment and closeness of observation. In the 
following passage he frankly owns th;it had his works been less 
numerous, their fame might have been more durable : — 

"Concerning ahnnst all my writings, I must confess tliat my judgment 
is, that fewer, well studied and polished, Lad been better ; but llie reader 
who can safely censure the books, is not tit to censure the author, nnless he 
had been upon the y)lace, and acquainted with all the occasions and circum- 
stances. Indeed, for tlie ' Siiint's Jiest,' I had four months' vacancy to 
write it, but in the midst of continual languisiiing and medicine ; but, for 
the rest, I wrote them in the crowd of all my other em|iloyments, which 
would allow me no great leisure for po'ishing and exnctness, or any orna- 
ment ; so that I scarce ever wrote one slieet twice over, nor stayed to make 
any blots or interlinin^s, but was lain to let it go as it was first conceived ; 
and when my own de-ire was rather to stay upon one thing long than tun 
over many, some sudden occasions or other extorted almost all my writings 
from me." 

Another eminent Dissenter was John Owen (1616-1683), first a 
Presbyterian, thereafter an Independent. He was a man of singular 
moderation and sweetness of tem[)er. He was a special favourite 
with Cromwell, who took him to Ireland to organise the College 
of Dublin, and subsequently to Scotland. After the Restoration, 
Clarendon offwed him preferment in the Church if he woul 1 con- 
form, and Charles himself desired his acquaintance. His volu- 
minous writings are exclusively on religious subjects. The style 
is bad. " I can't think how you like Dr Owen," said Robert Hall. 



JOHN BUNYAN. 301 

" T can't rend liim with patience ; I never read a page of Dr Owen, 
sir, without finding some confusion in his thoughts, either a truism 
or a contradiction in terms.' " Sir, he is a double Dutchman, 
floundering in a continent of mud." 

Less accommodating and plialtle, less sweet if not less enlight- 
ened, was George Fox (1624-1690), the Founder of the Society of 
Friends, an illegitimate son of the Church in a time of religions 
excitement, one of the most extraordinary men of genius in this 
eccentric generation. He was a grave, sober, reflective man, with 
1)0 outgoings of volatile imagination, buoyant egotism, or healthy 
energy in any shape ; as passive, unexcited, vacuous, as Bunyan 
was active, excitable, teeming with creative energy, — not pouring 
out force, but letting the world flow in upon him, judging and 
measuring the traditions and opinions floating about him, and 
striving in a calm way to reduce the bewildering mass to consistent 
clearness. Probably the more he pondered, the more he entangled 
himself in per{)lexing mazes, and he finally ceased to ponder, and 
took refuge in a set of arbitrary dogmas. He originated the promi- 
nent ideas of Qnakeiism, the use of "thou," the objection to un- 
cover the head before dignitaries, the objection to oaths, the aver- 
sion to war, the doctrine that inner light and not the Bible is the 
rule of life. Like Bunyan he was an illiterate artisan of an in- 
ferior craft, a cobbler or shoe-mender— holding to the shoemaker 
the same relation that the tinker holds to the brazier. His style 
is more compact, and has greater graphic felicity of plain language, 
than Bunyan's, but it has none of the Pilgrim's figurative richness. 
Another character of the time, of wider reputation than George 
Fox, was the man just mentioned, John Bunyan (1628-1688), " the 
wicked tinker of Elstow." We need not dwell upon the incidents 
of his early life and conversion, minutely and vividly related in his 
autobiogra[ihic 'Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.' Hia 
later biographers accuse himself and his early biographers of exag- 
gerating his youthful enormities by way of magnifying tlie diviiia 
grace. He says himself that "he did still let loose the reins of 
■ his lust, and delighted in all transgressions against the law of God ; 
so that until he came to the state of marriage, he was the very 
ringleader in all manner of vice and uni^odliness." The only sina 
that he specifically confesses to are Sabbath-breaking and swear- 
ing. From another sin pretty plainly stated in the above passage, 
Soiithey, followed by ^lacaulay, exculi^ates him on the ground of 
a subsequent si>ecific denial — exculpates him somewhat hastily; 
for though the natural interpretation of one plain-s})oken sentence 
is that the denial covers his whole life, yet, when we reflect and 
look closely, we see that the charge was pointed at his conduct 
alter conversion and marriage, and that, in the course of his in- 
dignant denial, he brings in the qualifying clause, " from my first 



'02 FliOM IGIO TO 1G70. 

conversion until now," and so does not contradict his previous 
Confession that he was not better tlian he shnuhl have been before 
lie "came to the state of marriage." "After he had been about 
live or six years awakened," "he was desired, and that with mucli 
earnestness, that he would be willing at sometimes to take in hand, 
in one of the meetings, to s])eak a word of exhortation unto them ;" 
and with much private irresolution, he consented to their retpaest, 
and "discovered his gift amongst them" with such effect that 
after a time he "was more particularly called forth, and appointed 
to a more ordinary and pulilic preaching of tlie Word." Five 
years after his ordination, in 1660, he was apprehenled under the 
( 'onventi<'le Act of the restored Government, taken before the 
(]uarter-sessions, and " indicted for an upholder and maintainor of 
unlawful assemblies and conventicles, and for not conforming to 
the national worship of the Church of England ; and after some 
conference there with the justic^es, they, taking his plain-dealing 
wi h them for a confession, as they termed it, of the indictment, 
did sentence him to a per[)etual banishment, because he refused to 
confoim. 80 being again delivered up to the gaoler's hands, he 
was had home to prison, and there lay complete twelve years, 
waiting to see what God would suffer those men to do with liim." 
During this long imprisonment, the latter half of which was 
very lenient and virtually no imprisonment at all, he began the 
' Pilgrim's ProLrress.' After he was set at liberty, he was chosen 
jjiistor of the Dissenters at Bedford, and lived there for the most 
jiart, preaching l)y stealth and visiting the dwellings of his flock. 
When in 1687 the penal laws against Dissenteis were relaxed, a 
church was built for him at Bedford, and attended V)y multitudes 
from all parts of the neighbourhood. He was particularly noted 
for his tact in reconciling dilferences, and often was called long 
journeys for that j)ur[)ose. One of those benevolent errands was 
the indirect cause of his death ; he caught cold from exposure, and 
died of fever on the 12th of August 168S. His principal work, 
besides the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Grace Abounding,' is the 
' Holy \\'ar,' an account of the fall and redem[)tion of mankind 
under figure of a war waged by Satan for the possession of the 
town of Mansoul. His immense popularity was not posthumous; 
he rose into fame before his death. "The 'Pilgrim's Progress,'" 
says Macaulay, " stole silently into the world. !Not a single copy 
of thi' first edition is known to be in existence. ^J'he year of pub- 
lication lias not been ascertained. It is probable that during some 
months the little volume circulated only among poor and obscure 
sectaries. ... In 1678 came forth a second edition with 
additions; and then the demand became immense. In the four 
following years the book was reprinted six times. The eighth 
edition, which contains the last im[>iovements made by the author, 



JOHN BUNYAN. 303 

was pnblisliod iii 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685." In 
learned circles doubts were expressed whetlier a poor ignorant 
tiidxer could l)e the author of such a work; which doubts he re- 
futed by jiublishing the second ]>art in 1684. In his metrical 
preface to the ' Holy War,' which followed soon after, he strongly 
asserted his originality — declaring that " None in all the world, 
without a lie, can say that this is mine, excepting I." The char- 
acter of such a man is an interesting study. Many of his pecu- 
liariti(^s lie upon the surface. He was naturally of vehement, 
ardent temper ; we need not the evidence of his early habits to 
assure us that his temper was one that an oath gave a natural 
relief to. He w;is often conscious of an uncontrollable impulse to 
blaspheme and imprecate. The imagination that reared the won- 
derful fabric of his allegories rendered his youth miserable by its 
ungovernable activity in creating images of fear ; at times he was 
as full of terribli! apprehensions as a horse in a forest at midnight. 
It was part of tlie impidsive nature of the man that he could not 
refrain from acting u[)on his fancies with the force of belief ; he 
Would turn aside from a house under the strength of a sudden 
apprehension that it would fall upon him. Not until he had 
obtained assurance of (jod's favour was this imaginative energy 
turned into more profitable channels. Once released from his 
fearful aiitici|iations of the wrath of God, his active mind found 
employment in new directions. We are apt to view him too ex- 
clusively as the author of the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' and to search 
there, and there only, for the signs of his intellectual power. In 
addition to the abundant evidence therein exhibited of his power 
of entering into the thoughts and feelings of men in different cir- 
cumstances, we may glean significant jiarticulars here and there 
in the records of his life. Tliere is a telling hint of his restless 
versatility in the catalogue of "abominations" that to the last he 
"found in his heart"; in the "inclining to unbelief," in the 
"wanderings and coldness in prayer," and in the being " apt to 
murmur because he had no more, and yet ready to abuse what he 
had." And wiiat better testimony could there be to jienetration 
and address than his fame in later life as a mediator in family 
quarrels] Imaginative power and knowledge of men (which may 
be said to be different aspects of the constructive faculty) are the 
main secrets of his success as a writer. Perhaps too much has 
been made of his style, viewed merely as written composition. 
His language is simple and often torcilile, and, particularly in 
'Grace Aho)mding,' has a soft melodious flow. The most pleasing 
clement is the gra]iliic force of the similitudes. And this is almost 
all that can be said. Macaulay's estimate is ex{)ressed with char- 
acteristic slap-dash extravagance: "No writer has said more 
exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for 



304 FROM 1640 TO 1070. 

vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every I'urpose 
of the poet, the orator, an 1 the divine, this homely dialect — the 
dialect of plain working men — was perfectly sufficient. There is 
no book ill our literature on which we would so readily st;ike the 
fame of the old un|iolluted English language, no book which shows 
so well how rich that language is in its own proiier wealth, and 
how little it has leen improved by all that it has borrowed." 
Even the assertion that " the vocabulary is the vocabulary of the 
common people " is inconsiderate and erroneous. The language 
is homely, indeed, but it is not the everyday speech of hinds and 
tinkers; it is the language of the Church, of the Bible, of Foxe's 
' Book of Martyrs,' and whatever other literature Banyan was in 
the habit of perusing. As for the "old un[)olluted English lan- 
guage," it needs no microscopical eye to detect in the ' Pilgrim's 
Progress' a considerable sprinkling of vulgar piovincialisms, and 
even of such Latin idioms as are to be found in his favourite 
old martyrologist Foxe. 

Two other devotional writers of this period retain tlieir hold 
on pious readers, especially among the lower orders : Samuel 
Rutherford (1600-1661), a Scotch minister (anthor of the 'Trial 
and Triumph of Faith'); and Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676), an 
English judge (author of ' Contemplations, Moral and Divine'). 

HISTORY. 

The great historian of the period was Edward Hyde, Lord 
Clarendon (1609-1674), who had some share in making material 
for the history that he wrote. The son of a country gentleman, 
he was bred to the law and in 1640 began his public career in 
Parliament. He supported the moderate oppositi<in to the arbi- 
trary measures of the King ; but when Parliament raised its tone 
and demanded the abolition of Episcopacy, he went over to the 
King's party. He accompanied the Prince and the Queen-mother 
to France. After the Restoration, which was brought about chieily 
by his skilful management, he was appointed Chancellor ; but in 
the course of a few years he became unpoimlar both with the King 
and with the people, and in 1667 he was impeached of high treason 
by the Commons, ordered by tlie King to quit the kingdom, and 
pursued by the Lords with a bill of banishment. He was never 
]>ermitte(l to return ; he spent four years of his exile at Montpel- 
lier, and the remaining three years at Rouen. It was during his 
two periods of exile that he composed his various works. His 
' History of the Grand Rebellion ' was begun at Jersey — his first 
])lace of refuge on the failure of the King's cause — and completed 
during his final banishment. His 'Life and Continuation of the 
History' was published from his manuscripts in 1759. He wrote. 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 305 

besides, several brief works now fallen into neglect. He seems to 
have been a man of great practical sagacity and singular tenacity 
of purpose — a hard, austere, and, on the whole, upright man ; too 
unyielding and too little disposed to regard the feelings of others. 
His manner was reserved and dictatorial. He comments upon the 
transactions of the time from his own point of view, animadvert- 
ing severely upon the enemies of the King; but it is universally 
allowed that he wrote with a liigh-princii)led regard for truth : he 
was probably too magnanimous, too loftily convinced of the right 
of his own cause, to seek to pervert the facts. His style is dry 
and rather prolix. In the history our interest is drawn chiefly to 
the judgments of men and measui-es ; the veteran politician was a 
penetrating observer, and his estimates of character and motive 
will always attract readers to his work. 

Two minor historians deserve a passing mention. Thomas May 
(1595-1650) — commended by l)r Johnson as one of the earliest 
English writers of Latin verse able "to contest the [)alm with any 
other of the lettered nations" — was secre:ary to the Parliament, 
and published in 1647 ' The History of the Parliament of England 
which began November 3, 1640.' Arthur Wilson (1596-1652), 
secretary to the Parliamentary General Essex, left a work on ' The 
Life and Reign of James I.' 

The two chief antiquaries were Sir William Bugdale (1605- 
1686), and his son-in-law Ellas Ashmole (1617-1692). 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

James Howell (1596-1666), a versatile writer of dictionaries, 
grammars, histories, biographies, poems, and political pamphlets, 
is now known chiefly as the author of the first volume ot ' Familiar 
Letters' in our language. Howell had something of the versatile 
activity of Defoe : like Defoe he travelled on the Continent for 
commercial purposes, and like Defoe he was often employed on 
political missions. Only, Howell had less power than the later 
adventurer, and was less intensely political, observing men good- 
humouredly, and i-ecording his observations with sparkling live- 
liness. As an example of the purposely familiar strain of his let- 
ters, take his account of the rise of the Piesbyterians, in a letter 
written from the Fleet prison to a grave inquirer : — 

"The first broacher of the presbyterian religion, and who made it differ 
from tliat of Home and Luther, was Calvin ; wlio beini? once banislicd 
Geneva was revoked, at, whicli time, lie no less petulantly thiin jirolaiuly 
aiiplicd to liitnsell that text of the iiol}' prophet which was incaned of Ciirist, 
Tkc stone which the builders re/u cd, is made the headstone 0/ /he comer, d-c. 
Thus Geneva lake su-allnwed up tlie eiiihioiial sea, and cliuich hinds were 
made secular; wliicli was the white they levelled at. This Geneva birtl fli-w 
thence to France, and batched the Iluf,'onots, which inal<e about the tinih 
part of that people. It took wing also to Bohemia and Germany high and 

U 



306 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

low, as the PMlatinate, the land of Hes^e, and the confederate provinces of 
the states of Holland, whence it took fliglit to Si'Otland and England. It 
took first footing in Scotland, wht-n King James was a child in his cradle ; 
but when he came to understand hiinself, and was manumitted from 
Buchanan, he grew cold in it ; and being come to Eiigbind, he utterly dis- 
claimed it, terming it in a jaiblic speech of his to the parliament a sect, 
rather than a religion. To this sect may be imputed all the scissnres that 
have liippened in Christianity, with most of the wars tliat have lacerated 
poor Europe ever since ; and it may be called the source of the civil distrac- 
tions that now afflict this poor island." 

Howell, as is evident from the above, was a royalist : and when 
be wrote it, he lay in prison by order of the Parliament. 

When Fuller's "Church History' was published, it was attacked 
by a somewhat flippant and self-confident controversialist, Peter 
Heylin (1600-1662), author of a ' History of the Reformation in 
England.' Heylin began to write at an early age, publishing 
' Microcosmus ; or, a Description of the World,' a popular geo- 
graphical work, in 162 1 ; and to the end of his life he continued 
a prolific and varied writer. In 1625 he published an account of 
a six weeks' tour in France — a very flippant and superficial affair, 
with occasional dashes of clever expression. In his history he is 
a bitter partisan on the royalist side. He was in holy orders, and 
is said to have died partly of chagrin at not being recognised after 
the Restoration. 

John Earle (1601-1665), chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles TL, 
appointed at the Restoration Bishop of Worcester, and sul)se(iuently 
promoted to Salisbury, followed in the wake of Overbury, Dekker, 
and others, as a writer of essays and characters. His ' ISIicrocos- 
mography ; or, a Piece of the World discovered in Essays and 
Characters,' was published about 1628, and becan)e popular. An 
eleventh edition was printed in 181 1. Tiie characters are such as 
an Antiquary, a Carrier, a Country Fellow, a University Dun. 
He writes in the same punning antithetical strain as Overbury, 
but caricatures more, and has a much less delicate fancy. 

Long after the death of Samuel Butler, author of 'Hudibras' 
(1612-1680), in 1759, appeared his 'Genuine Remains in Prose.' 
The principal of them are " Characters " in the style of Overbury 
and Earle. Butler belongs to this generation through his satires 
on the Puritans. His prose has something of the coarse satiric 
vigour of his poetry; the wit has a much stronger flavour than 
either Overhury's or Earle's. 

Owen Felltham (1608-1677?) pnt forth in 1628 a second edition 
of a work called — 'Resolves' (that is, "Solutions"); 'Divine, 
Moral, and Political,' — consisting of essays on the model of 
Bacon's. The work made little noise at the time, but being re- 
printed in 1707, it went through twelve editions in less than two 
years. The thoughts are commonplace, the method bad, being the 



MISCELLANEOUS WlilTEliS. 307 

disjointed method of Bacon's essays without the natural clearness; 
and there is a constant straining after imagery. Their popularity 
in Queen Anne's reign is accounted for by their high nior.d tone, 
and their occasionally felicitous application of Baconian imagery 
to common themes, such as moderation in grief, evil-speaking, in- 
dustry, and meditation. 

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). — Were this book intended as 
a guide to the intellectual epicure, it should give a large space to 
the works of Sir Thomas Browne, the curiously learned, meditative, 
and humorous jihysician of Norwich. ^ Born in London the son of 
a rich merchant, he lost his father early, and was defrauded by one 
of his guardians, but was taken up by his step-father and sent to 
Winchester school, and thence to Oxford. He studied medicine, 
practised for some time near Oxford, travelled on the Continent, 
received M.D. at Leyden in 1633, returned to England, practised 
for a short time near Halifax, settled in Norwich, and there s})ent 
the remainder of his life. His first work, ' Religio Medici,' — The 
Religion of a Physician — published in 1643,^ made an immediate 
sensation, was translated into Latin, and " very eagerly read in 
England, France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany." It is remark- 
able for its equanimity and tranquil warmth of sentiment ; he 
avows himself an orthodox believer in the English Church, yet 
he loves the symbols of Catholic worship ; he is elevated in spirit 
at hearing "the Ave-Mary bell," and is moved to tears at sight of 
a solemn procession ; when others, " blind with op{)Osition and 
prejudice, fall into an excess of scorn and laughter," he "cannot 
laugh at but rather pities " the asceticism of pilgrims and friars, 
because there is in it "something of devotion." He did not like 
to hear that the Anglican religion began with Henry VIII. — he 
desired for it a longer antiquity; and he disapproved of the 
" popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs at the Bishop of 
Rome" — "though he call me heretic, I will not return to liini 
the name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon." Eor 
all his moderation the book was placed on the ' Index Expurga- 
torius.' 3 His other works made less immediate noise, though they 
contain equally fine passages; their themes are less exciting, run 
counter to no vested interests. The ' Pseudodoxia Ei)ideniica,' 
or 'Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors,' 1646, deals with 
jihysical, not moral, errors: — false beliefs concerning the proper- 
ties of gems, of plants, of animals, of men ; mistakes in popular 

1 See p. 95. 

2 A surreptitious copy, published in 1642, he diso^vne(l as imperfect. 

* The fate of his retiued moderation is a warning. Hating nobody, he waa 
hated and attacked by the extreme adlierents of all partiis ; denounced as an 
atheist, as a Papist, and as a Presliyterian. On the ollur liand, a certain Quaker 
was hopeful of bringing him over to the Society of FriLiids, because lie disliked 
strife, and with all his love of >yniljolic acts, would not lift his hut to a urueilix. 



308 FROM 16i0 TO 1670. 

pictures (the conventional dolphin, pelican, <kc., the conventional 
temptation of Eve, sacrifice of Isiiac, kc.) ; cosnmgrapliical and 
geographical errors (concerning the seasons, the river Nilus, the 
blaikness of Negroes, &c.); historical errors, chiefly touching 
Scripture (that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that John 
the Evangelist should not die, &c.) 'The Garden of Cyrus, or 
the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, 
artificially, naturally, mystically considered,' 1658, is a fanciful 
search through nature for his favourite figure the Quincunx : he 
finds, says Coleridge, "quincunxes in heaven above, qiuncunxes 
in earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in 
tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything." 
' Hydriotaiiliia,' Urn-burial, published along with the ' Garden of 
Cyrus,' is a discourse upon the ancient practice of cremation, 
occasioned by the discovery of certain urns in Norfolk ; in the 
concluding chapter, the solemn impassioned rhetoric on the short- 
ness of life, and of posthumous memory, is considered his finest 
effort. 

Browne's character is drawn by De Quincey in its points of 
contrast with the character of Jeremy Taylor. He is " deep, tran- 
quil, and majestic as Milton, silently premeditating and 'disclos- 
ing his golden couplets,' as under some genial instinct of incuba- 
tion." The reference to Milton is not so happy : Browne had not 
the passionate fervour of Milton ; grave, so'emn, meditative, with- 
out fire or freshness of sentiment, he would have shrunk from 
Milton's vituperative scorn, and could never have conceived the 
tender and graceful fancies of Milton's smaller poems. The pre- 
vailing characteristic of his style is tranquil elaboration. He 
al)ounds in carefully constructed periods, intermixed with short 
pointed sentences that have a singularly Johnsonian sound, from 
the fulness of the rhythm. His sentence - structure is more 
"formed" than in any previous writer, perhaps more so than in 
any writer anterior to Johnson. His figures are original, ingeni- 
ous, and peculiarly apt ; he does not err in excess of similitudes. 
Felicitous and complete expression, comparatively free from tautol- 
ogy, inspires a general feeling of vigour ; and here and there we 
are carried away by flights of high and solemn elevation. The 
gieat drawback for the modern reader is his excessive use of words 
coined from the Latin. Even Johnson condemns him on this 
sc'ire. His Latinised diction is all the more remarkable because 
he expressly condemns Latin quotations, saying that "if elegancy 
still proceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream we have 
observed to flow from many, we shall within few years be fain to 
learn Latin to understand linglish, and a work will prove of equal 
facility in either." His offences have probably been exaggerated, 
extreme passages being tendered as fair examples; still in every 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITEKS. 309 

page theie are at least two words tli.it have not been naturalised — 
improperations, amit, depilous, mamiduction, and suchlike. 

Another rechise, more sensitive and egotistic, and less full of 
power than tlie tranquil sage of Norwich, was Dr Henry More 
(1614-1687), Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was 
obstinately attached to the cloister : he might have had a bishop- 
ric ; and he refuse I even the Mastership of his College. His 
favourite me litations were mystical speculations about the soul, 
first evolved in his poem ' Psychozoia,' or " the first part of the 
song of the Soul, containing a Christiano-Platonical display of 
life." He was an admirer of Descartes. He and a few congenial 
spirits formed in the reign of Charles II. a school known as the 
Platonising or Latitudinaiian Divines. 

Bishop Wilkins (1614-1672) is known as the author of an " Essay 
towards a real Character, and Philosophical L-.niguage." He was 
one of our earliest physical speculators : he contended that the 
moon was inhabited (' Discovery of a New World,' 1638) ; and in 
a work published in 1640, one of the earliest systematic defences 
of the Copernican system, he maintained that the earth is probably 
one of the planets. During the Civil War and the Protectorate 
he sided with the Parliament, and in 1656 married a widowed 
sister of Oliver Cromwell. He was appointed Warden of Wadham, 
Oxford, and afterwards Master of Trinity, Cambridge. From this 
preferment he was degraded at the Restoration, but he afterwards 
regained the royal favour, and was elevated to the bench. He 
is ilbistiious as one of the founders of the Eoyal Society: the 
scientific enthusiasts afterwards incorporated with this institution 
held their first meetings in the lodgings of Dr Wilkins. In the 
Church he was an eminent member of the Latitudinarian school. 
But his name is most widely known in connection with his " dis- 
course concerning the possibility of a passage to the moon." 

Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) deserves a word among the half- 
mystic, half-scientific men of his time. He was a strange com- 
pound of dashing soldier, accomplished courtier, successful h)ver, 
anil occult philosopher. There are passages in his treatise — 'Of 
Bodies and Man's Soul ' — hardly surjiassed in Sir Thomas Browne. 
He was (ine of the original Council of the Iloyal Society. 

Izaak Walton (1593-1683), already mentioned as the biographer 
of Hooker, was another quiet and peaceable man in an age of ex- 
citement. He wrote also the lives of Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, 
George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson : the respective dates of 
jmblication being, "Donne," 1640; "Wotton," 1651 ; "Hooker," 
1662; "Herbert," 1670; "Sanderson," 1678. But the work 
usually coupleil with his name is 'The Compilete Angler' (1653), 
still read by the followers of "tiie gentle craft" for its informa- 
tion, and interesting to the general reader as disclosing the char- 



310 FROM 1G40 TO 1670. 

acter of the writer — quiet, humorous, and enamoured of fre.sh 
pustoral scenery. Walton was a retired London linen-draper ; he 
had m.irried into a clerical family, and spent the greater part of 
his retirement at the houses of country clergymen. 

John Milton (1608-1674) wrote a good many works in prose, 
although, as he said, " in this manner of writing, knowing myself 
interior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another 
ta.sk, I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand." 
His first appearance was on the Puritan side, in a treatise entitled 
'Of Reformation,' 1641. In the same year he put forth a treatise 
* Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' as his contribution in the warfare 
raised by Joseph Hall's 'Humble Ivemonstrance' in favour of 
Episcopacy, Tijis work he had to back up with two tracts: 
"Animadversions on a 'Defence' of the Remonstrance;" ami " An 
Apology for Smectymnuus," in reply to a criticism of the Animad- 
versions. In 1642 he came forward with a larger work — ' The 
Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy.' This 
was for the time his last word on the Church government contro- 
versy. In 1644 he wrote his ' Areopagitica, a Speech for the 
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,' the first formal plea for the free- 
dom of the press. In 1645 he wrote his famous works advocating 
greater freedom of Divorce — ' Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' 
'Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,' ' Tetrachordon,' 
and ' Colasterion.' After the exertion of writing these works — 

" I imagined," he says, " that I was about to enjoy an interval of unin- 
terrupted ease, and turned my tlioughts to a continued liistory of my country, 
from the earliest times to the present period. I had already finished four 
books ; when after the subversion of the monarch}', and the establishment 
of a republic, I was surprised by an invitation from the Council of State, 
who desired my services in the office Ibr foreign affairs. "A book appealed 
soon after, which was ascribed to the King, and contained the most invidious 
charges against the Parliament. I was ordered to answer it, and op[iosed 
the ' Eikonoclastes ' to the ' Eikon.' " 

This was in the end of 1649. Before this, in the beginning of 
the year, innuel lately after the King's execution, he published his 
' Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.' Thereafter he engaged in a 
Latin controversy with Salmasius, a rhetorical Leydcn Professor, 
said to have been hired to defend the memory of the King, and 
asperse his executioners ; the titles of Milton's works were, ' A 
Defence of the Pe( tple of England ' ( 1 65 1 ), and ' A Second Defence ' 
(1654). An earnest champion up to the last moments of the dis- 
solving Commonwealth, he wrote in 1659 — ' A Treatise of Civil 
Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,' 'Considerations towards the like 
liest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church,' and ' A Letter 
to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth.' Next 
year he addressed a letter to Monk — ' The present means and brief 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 311 

declaration of a free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice, 
and without delay.' When the fatal moment came nearer, he 
issued a last appeal — ' The ready and easy way to establish a free 
Commonweal tij, and the excellence thereof cumpared with the 
inconvenience and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation. 
The author J. M,' Immediately after tlie Restoration he was busy 
with his 'Paradise Lost.' His remaining works in pro.-^e are — a 
' History of Biitain, down to the Norman Conquest' (1670); a 
treatise — ' Of True Eeligion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what 
best Means may be used against the growth of Popery;' and a 
' iJrief History of JMuscovia, and of other less known Countries 
lying eastward of Russia, as far as Cathay.' He wrote also in 
Latin a 'Treatise on Logic;' published a collection of Latin 
Familiar Letters ; spent several years on an extensive Latin Dic- 
tionary ; and left at his death a system of Christian Doctrine, the 
discovery of which, in 1823, and its publication by royal order, 
gave an opportunity for Macaulay's celebiated Essay. 

Concerning Milton's style the most diverse ojiinions have been 
pronounced. Everything depends upon the point of view. Rich 
and powerful it is undeniably, coming from such a master of 
words, and yields in the highest degree the pleasure of luxurious 
expression. But the student need hardly be warned that Milton's 
pruse is to be enjoyed without being imitated : for modern pur- 
poses the language and idiom are too stiffly Latinised, and the 
imagery too fantastic. Further, for a work of controversy the 
style is too ornate, too unmethodical, and too coarsely vituperative 
to have much convincing or converting power. In iNIilton still 
more than in Taylor the application is lost in the gorgeous splen- 
dour of words and imagery, and all but decided adherents are 
repelled by the unmeasured discharge of abuse and riilicule. 

The author of ' Eikoa Basilike ; or the Portraiture of his ]\Iost 
Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings,' was Bishop 
Gauden (1605-1662).i Purporting to be written by Charles him- 
self, and published a few days after his execution, this work had a 
prodigious ellect, fifty editions being sold within the year. There 
is nothing in the style deserving notice ; it professes to be a simple 
record of the King's meditations. 

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), " the philosopher of Malmesbury," 
is notorious for his views of human nature, and of the relations 
between the governing power and the subject. His long life covers 
three generations. 'I he works that have immortalised his name 
were written between 1640 and 1660: the dates of publieation 
being—' De Give,' piivately circulated in 1642, published with 
notes in 1647, and translated into English in 1650; 'Treatise on 

* Tlie authorship of the ' Eikon Basilike ' was the great literaiy puzzle of the 
seventeenth century, as ' Junius ' was of the eighteenth. 



812 FROM 1640 TO 1670. 

Human Nature,' 1650; ' De Corpore Politico,' a concise summary 
in English of his main political views, 1650; 'Leviathan, or the 
Matter, Power, and Form of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and 
Civil,' 165 1 ; ' De Corpore,' tiie fundamental work of his philo- 
sophical system, 1655, done into English 1656. 

Milmesbury was the place of his birth. It is said that his 
mother, overpowered by the national excitement at the coming of 
the Armada, brought him forth prematurely. He mentions this 
himself to account for a certain constitutional timidity that never 
left him. He was a precocious child. He graduated at Oxford in 
1608 ; and being almost immediately appointed half tutor, half 
com[)anion to the son of the first Earl of Devonshire, he spent the 
next twenty years of his life in ease, travelling on the Continent, 
and at home forming the acquaintance of the most eminent men of 
the time, Bacon, Lord Herbert, Ben Jonson, and others. His pupil 
and patron died in 1628, and in that year he made his first publi- 
cation, a translation of Thucydides, undertaken to show the evils 
of popular rule. From 1631 to 1637 he was tutor to the third 
Earl of Devonshire, a boy ; and travelling in that capacity, made 
the acquaintance of Galileo, Mersenne, and other eminent men, 
in whose company he had his thoughts turned towards physical 
science. For eleven years, from 1640 to 165 1, he sought shelter 
in Paris from the apprehended hostility of the Long Parliament, 
having by this time become known as a political thinker, and was 
active, as we have said, in the composition of his leading works. 
In 165 1, fearing persecution at Paris in consequence of his obnox- 
ious opinions, he ventured back to England, and lived unmolested 
with the Devonshire family through the remainder of the Com- 
monwealth, and the first nineteen years of the restored monarchy. 
Though free from material discomfort, his old age was not a little 
troubled. He was assailed by swarms of hostile critics for his 
obnoxious views of human nature and politics, and his works were 
formally censured by Parliament in 1666. To add to this vexation, 
he ha 1 provoked a quarrel with mathematicians, Dr Wallis and 
others, msiintaining that lie had discovered the quadrature of the 
circle, and defying the whole race of geometers and natuial philo- 
sophers with acrimonious contempt. In extreme old age he " wrote 
in Latin metre a history of the Romish Church and an autobiogra- 
phy ; and in his eighty-sixth yeai-, amid other occupations, trans- 
lated the 'Odyssey' and 'Iliad' into vigorous, if not elegant, 
English verse." After his death was published his last work, 
entitled 'Behemoth; or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 
to 1660.' 

The merits ascribed to his style are brevity, simplicity, and pre- 
cision. These merits are sometimes extravagantly overrated. Sir 
James Mackintosh says : — 



MISCELLAXEOUS WRITERS. 313 

" A permanent foundation of his fame remains in his admirable style, 
which seems to be the very perfection of didactic liingiiiige. Shoit, clear, 
precise, pithy, his langnage never has more than one mranin;/, which it 
never requires^ a second thought, to take. By the help of his exact method, 
it takes so firm a hold ou the mind that, it will not allow alteutiou to 
slacken." 

This is mere reckless hyperbole. The words put in italics describe 
an ideal that every expositor shoull try to attain, but which no 
expositor can ho]'e to reach. Undoubtedly Hobbes took great 
pains to be simple and precise. He makes an effort to express 
himself in familiar words, explains his general positions by exam- 
jiles, and his order of exposition is such as can be easily fohowed. 
Having a deep sense of the evils of ambiguous language, he is care- 
ful to define his terms. Furtlier, he has great jjowers of terse and 
vigorous. statement, his figures are studied and apt, and his didactic 
strain is enlivened by ingenious and occasionally sarcastic point. 
Yet he is far from being a perfect expositor, as he is by no means 
always a consistent thinker. When he enters upon details, he is 
often perplexed, does not keep his main subject prominent, and 
introduces statements out of their proper order. There are 2)as- 
sages in his works that Sir James could not have talcen up at first 
sight without a superhuman quickness of apprehension. The truth 
is, that Hobbes owes his reputation for simplicity and clearness in 
a very large measure to the simplicity of his leading ideas. The 
plain language and exact method would not have made the style 
So famous had not the matter been simple to the degree of slurring 
over difficulties. Both upon mind and upon politics he superin- 
duces simple and plausible theories, assembles the facts that sup- 
port them, and says nothing about the facts that they do not ex- 
])lain. That there is an external world an 1 a mental experience; 
that thought consists merely in a continuance of movements com- 
municated to the organs of sense by the external world ; that man's 
motives are originally selfish ; that the aboriginal men lived in war 
and anarchy ; that government arose when they came to an under- 
standing, and entered into a contract to observe certain rules ; that 
these rules constitute right, and must at all risks be obeyed, — such 
doctrines are simple, immediately and clearly intelligible, but their 
simplicity is gained by glossing over the complicacy of the actual 
problems. Not that Hobbes had any conscious desire to skip over 
difficulties. The inaccurate simplicity of his doctrines is to be 
attributed to his strong feeling of the vagueness of previous specu- 
lations, his endeavour to attain greater certainty l)y applying the 
method of mathematics, and his failure to verify his results by an 
ai>peal to actual life. 

Along with Hobbes may be mentioned, as a political speculator, 
James Harrington (1611-1677), author of 'Oceana' (published 



314 FKOM 1640 TO 1U70. 

1656), an ideal republic. In liis review of the literatuie of the 
period, Hume has the following : — 

" Harrin,s;toi's 'Oceana' was well adapted to tliat age, wher^ the plans of 
imaginary republics were the daily suljjects of debate and conversation, and 
even in our time it is justly admired as a work of genius and invention. 
Tlie style of this author wants ease and lluency, but the good matter which 
his work contains makes compensation." 

Another republican, a more fiery man of action than Harrington, 
was Algernon Sidney (1622-1683), author of a ' Discourse on Gov- 
ernment.' Sidney inherited headstrong blood from both parents. 
His father was Robert, Earl of Leicester, and his mother a daughter 
of Percy, Earl of Northumberland. He was a most determined foe 
to monarchy; engaged vehemently on the side of the Parliament, 
refused to take office under the usurpation of Cromwell, and fled 
to the Continent at the Restoration, refusing the mediation of his 
friends with the restored monarch. Obtaining permission to re- 
turn in 1677, he threw himself into the opposition to the Govern- 
ment, and in his furious zeal for the acconiplisliment of his aims, 
engaged, if the papers of the French Ambassador are to be trusted, 
in unscrupulous intrigues with France. In 1683 he was condemned, 
on very {lartial evidence, upon the charge of conspiring to assassi- 
nate the King, and was executed on Tower-hill. He is regarded 
as a martyr to republican principles. His ' Discourse ' was first 
published in 1698. 

Marchmont Needham (1620-1678) is the chief representative ot 
journalism in this generation. Public events favo\n-ed the growth 
of ne\vs[)apers : the Thirty Years' War on the Continent was not 
concluded when to{)ics of more powerful interest arose at home 
with the outbreak of the Civil War. Many sheets, with every 
variety of piquant title, started into existence to meet the public 
thirst for intelligence. On the ist of January 1642 the ' Mercurius 
Aulicus' was issued from Oxford, avowedly as the organ of the 
King's party. It was edited by one P)irkenhead, then a Fellow df 
All-Souls, and for a short time Professor of Moral Philoso[)liy. 
He was appointed licenser of the press after the Restoration. In 
1643, Needham, another Oxonian, appeared with an opposition 
" Mercury," entitled ' Mercurius Britannicus.' His paper was ex- 
ceedingly popular ; but the Puritans were stern censors of the 
press, and the gay and restless Needham, after serving them for 
four years, went over to the King, and turned his wit against his 
former masters. He stood by the King to the last, and was im- 
prisoned and condenmed to death ; but being offered his life by the 
Independents upon condition of giving them his seivices against 
the Presbyterians, he accepted the offer, and remained " Parlia- 
mentary intelligencer" until the Restoration. Both Birkenhead 



MISCELLANEOUS WniTEHS. 315 

and Necdham are abused for raillery, V)uffoonery, and want of 
principle ; but facts do not show them to have differed much from 
their contemporaries, except in a clever faculty of gaining the 
popular ear.^ Neodham's changes of party are explicable without 
the snppositiiin that he was worse than other men. He seems to 
have been a gay, versatile creature, and is mentioned by Anthony 
k Wood as possessing considerable humour and cunvivial qualities. 
1 Combill ]\Iagazme, July 1868. 



CHAPTER V. 



FROM 1670 TO 170a 



BIE WILLIAM TEMPLE, 

1628 — 1699. 

Diplomatist, statesman, and miscellaneous writer, one of the 
most remarkable men under the reign of Charles II. Swift, not 
given to over-praising, said : " It is generally believed that this 
author has advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection 
as it can well bear." And Johnson is reported to have laid down 
in conversation that " Sir William Temple was the first writer 
who gave cadence to English prose. Before this time they were 
careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence 
ended with an im])ortant word or an insignificant word, or with 
what part of speech it was concluled." Spoken in the hurry of 
conversation, this dictum asserts several merits. Usually the first 
part is quoted and the second jjassed over, altliough the second is 
the higher compliment. Better general method, and greater atten- 
tion to details of expression, are more valuable improvements than 
superior regularity of cadence. 

To the family of Temple belong some of the most eminent 
names in our political history. The late Lord Palmerston was 
descended from a brother of Sir William's. In last century 
three Privy Councillors — Sir Richard Temple, Baron Cobhani ; 
Earl Temple ; and Lord Grenville — came froui another brancli of 
the same family. " There were times," says Macaulay, " when 
the cousinhood, as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have 
furnished almost all the materials necessary for the cnnstruction 
of an efficient Cabinet." The lineal descendants of Sir William 



SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 317 

liiinself ended with the third generation. The family has been 
continued chielly through the female line. 

Our author's ancestors did not rise to the highest offices of 
state, yet they were men of considerable mark. It is interesting 
to know that his grandfather was the chosin companion of Sir 
rhilip Sidney during the Flemish war, and was present at that 
liero's untimely death. His father was made ^Master of the llolls 
of Ireland by Charles I., and retained the ofilce, with a sliort 
interval, throughout the Commonwealth, dying in 1677, of the 
same age as the century. 

Sir ^Villiaul was born in London. Ilis tutor at Cambridge, 
where he lesided two years, was the learned Cudworth. From 
1648 to 1654 he travelled on the Continent, making himself 
master of French and Sjianish. His first public employment was 
as a member of the Irish Convention in 1660: there he gained 
distinction by taking the lead against an exorbitant tax proi)osed 
by the new and jjopular Government. In 1665 began his career 
as a diplomatist. In that year lie displayed such address as envoy 
to the Bishop x)( Munster that he was ajipointed Uesident at the 
viceregal Spanish Court of Brussels. In 1668 he accomplished 
with unparalleled speed the famous negotiation usually couided 
with his name, the Trijile Alliance between England, Holland, 
and Sweden. Immediately after this he was made Ambassador 
at the Hague, and completed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 
1670, in consequence of the King's dishonest intrigues with France, 
he was recalled, and spent three years in retirement at Sheen. In 
1673 he concluded the peace that followed upon Charles's second 
war with Holland ; and, declining an otfer of the embassy to Spain, 
and also the Secretaryship of State, was again, in June 1674, ap- 
pointed Ambassador at the Hague. He had the credit of bringing 
about (luring that embassy the marriage between William of Orange 
and the Princess Mary. In 167S he represented England in an 
endeavour to settle the complicated relations of Continental powers; 
out his efforts to uphold the dignity of our Government as an ar- 
bitrating power were baffled by the distractiiigly crooked policy of 
the King and his Ministers. He maintained his integrity by refus- 
ing to sign the treaty of Nimeguen. In 1679 he was summoned 
from Holland to take office as Secretary of State, but ingeniously 
contrived to evade the hazardous dignity. His only other public 
service was the plan of a Privy Council of thirty to renew the 
confidence of the nation in King Charles. When this scheme 
worked ill from the multii)licity of intrigue at the Court, he retired 
altogether from public business. He was frequently consulted dur- 
ing his retirement by Charles IF., James II., and William; but 
nothing could induce him to resume office. No man, he said, 
shoidd be in public business after fifty ; and ten years before this 



318 FROM 1G70 TO 1700. 

he had declnred that he knew enough of Courts to see " that they 
were not made for one another." Having purchased Rlour Park, 
near Faruhum in Surrey, he went there in i6S6, and amused him- 
self with literature, architecture, Dutch gardening, and other em- 
ployments of retired leisure. At the lievolutinn he w;is much 
pressed to take office, but steadfastly refused, and lived in retire- 
ment at Moor Park till his death in 1699. 

The various works he has left us were composed in his periods 
of retirement. During his temporary seclusion, between 1670 
and 1673, he wrote his 'Observations on the United Provinces,' 
and some misce laneous pieces. In his final retirement he selected 
and prepareil for the press his public correspondence during the 
years of his active life. He also wrote ' Memoirs of the Treaty of 
Nimeguen,' with an account of the difficulties that this Treaty was 
designed to solve. To complete his record of what passed during 
his public employment, he wrote other i\Iemoirs, " from the peace 
concluded 1679, to the time of the author's retirement from public 
business." He wrote also various I\Iiscellanies — " Upon the Gar- 
dens of Epicurus;" "Of Heroic Virtue;" "Of Poetry;" "On 
the Cure of the Gout by Moxa," ikc. 

"Sir William Temple's person," says the nameless writer of "a 
short character " prefixed to his works, " is best known by his 
pictures and prints. He was rather tall than low; his shape, 
when young, very exact ; his hair a dark brown, and curled 
naturally, and, whilst that was esteemed a beauty, nobody had 
it in greater perfection ; his eyes grey, but lively ; and his body 
lean, but extreme active, so that none acquitted themselves better 
at all sorts of exercise." 

What princijially strikes us in Temple's intellect is its singular 
measure, solidity, sagacity. In negotiating he timed his move- 
ments with admirable skill ; he succeeded in M-hatever he under- 
took ; he was the author of the most famous alliance in that 
generation, and nobody has detected a flaw in his plans, or proved 
that in his diplomacy he should have acted otherwise than he did. 
The same sagacity a{)|iears in his political s]«eculations ; he keeps 
close to the facts, and does not begin to speculate till he has 
mastered them. Such he was as a man of practice and a thinker, 
attempting comparatively little, and doing what he attempted with 
thoroughness. When we view him on the aesthetic side, we see 
the same characteristic appearing in the shape of refined taste. 
He did not attempt works of the imagination, but he studied the 
beauties of order and finished rhythm, and even in his most 
didactic compositions the language and the similitudes have a 
refined elevation. 

He seems to have been a man of deep tenderness and strong 



SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 319 

personal feelings, a great favourite with children, a passionate 
lover, a fond husband, a constant friend. As his likes were strong, 
so were liis dislikes ; he had such an aversion for some men as to 
be impatient of their convors;ition. 

But however strong his feelings might be, he kept the expres- 
sion (if them under control. He was not extravagant in his 
professions of attachment, but sprightly and humorous ; and he 
had, as even Macaulay admits, a good command of his naturally 
irrital)le temper. S^i with his love of power; he did not rush 
actively into the struggle of ambition, and he would not seem to 
have occu;)ii'd his imagination with ambitious dreams. He was 
equally moderate in his admiration of power: he could admire; 
lie was not an envious disappointed man ; but he admired with a 
just appreciation of the actors and the circumstances, Unprinci- 
jiled, egotistic ambition he could not admire ; his sympathies and 
general human kindliness were too predominant for that. In his 
political treatises, his personality comes little to the surface ; he is 
grave and dignified as becomes his subject, and criticises in the 
impersonal spirit of a statesman warmly interested in humanity, 
but elevated a'^ovc party or national feeling by the comprehen- 
siveness of his views. Jn the Preface to the ' Observations on the 
United Provinces,' he states how far he looks upon History as a 
field of scenic interest.^ His published letters abound in graceful 
compliments and strokes of wit. But in nearly all his formal 
essays he has an eye to instruction rather than pleasure : " I can 
truly say, that, of all the paper I have blotted, which has been a 
great deal in my time, 1 have never written anything for the 
public without the intention of some public good." 

In the discharge of public business he showed the measure that 
seems to us his most striking characteristic. That he could act 
wiih vigour and decision upon an emergency was proved in more 
than one trying situation. He ascribed the failure of his constitu- 
tion in middle life partly to " unnecessary diligences in his em- 
ployments abroad;" and doubtless one-half of his success as a 
diplomatist was due to his promptitude in seizing the favourable 
moment. But he kept his energies strictly in hand ; he lived 
temperate!}', he was distinguished for his frankness and truthful- 
ness, and showed no pro})ensity to grasp momentary advantages 
by unscrupulous craft. He refrained immovably from affairs that 
he knew to be beyond his power. When the Court was in confu- 
sion from the intrigues of unscrupulous rivals and the unjiatriotic 
])olicy of the King, nothing could induce him to accept office. He 
joined neither the unprinci})led struggle for power, nor the hope- 
less endeavours under the name of patriotism. He boldly lectured 
the King on the duties of his position, and steadily wound himself 

1 See p. 322. 



320 FEOM 1670 TO 1700. 

out of the imbroglio. He could act with vigour, but action was 
not a necessity of his nature. After his fixed resolution "never 
more to meddle with any jmblic employment," he busied himself 
with his garden and his bonks, "takinir no more notice of what 
passed upon the public scene than an old man uses to do of what 
is acted on a theatre, where he gets as easy a seat as he can, enter- 
tains himself with what passes on the stage, not caring who the 
actors are, nor what the plot, nor whether he goes out before the 
play be done." 

In practical politics the most important of Temple's views are 
those regarding England's best Continental policy in the then 
existing situation. The Triple Alliance, between England, Hol- 
land, and Sweden, is a clear and easily remembered index. As 
Sidney and Raleigh had to urge the growing power of Spain upon 
the Government of Elizabeth, so Temple had to urge the growing 
])ower of France upon the Government of Charles. He advocated 
alliance with Holland in opposition both to commercial jen lousy 
and to the French proclivities of the Court. As a speculator upon 
the 'Original and Nature of Government,' he wiites with charac- 
teristic sagacity. Concerning the origin of government, his lead- 
ing views coincide with what is now generally accepted. He dis- 
misses the theory of an original contract, and treats political com- 
munities as an ex[)ansion of the family system. The existence of 
aristocracies he ascril)es in most cases to an incoming of conquerors. 
As regards the best form of government, he holds that there are 
but two leading forms, the rule of one and the rule of several ; that 
experience gives little light as to the best system in detail. He 
lays down the seeming truism that "those are generally the best 
governments where the best men govern." But farther, he consid- 
ers that all government rests ultimately on the will of the people, 
however propitiated, and that the most stable government is the 
jiyramidal, the government that rests on the widest basis of popu- 
lar confidence. He is not misled into overratintj the importance 
of Greek and Roman history to the political student ; he regards 
the classical governments as short-lived political failures, and con- 
siders the more stable institutions of China, of the Ottomans, of 
the Goths, and of Peru, as at least equally deserving of attention. 

His Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning maintains that the 
ancient literature is superior to the modern. We must remember 
that it was written before i688. He was not the originator of the 
comparison ; it was a favourite theme among members of the 
French Academy and of the English Royal Society. Our author 
dwells chiefly on general considerations. He rebuts the argument 
that the moderns must be better than the ancients because intel- 
lects are very much the same in all ages and countries, and because 



SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 321 

the moderns have alwnys tlie advantarje of the oxporience of their 
l)redecess()rs. ile arcruL'S that the (Jreeks had before them the 
wisdom of the Egyptians and the Hindus; that " many circiun- 
stunces cnncur to one production that do not to any other, in one 
or many ages ;" and that in recent times leaining had l/een discour- 
aged by ecclesiastical dispntes, civil dissensions, want of royal 
patronay,e, and general contempt of scholarsiiip, owing to the ex- 
cessive pedantry of some scholars. He considers Sidney, l^acon, 
and Selden the three greatest " wits" among the English moderua: 
he does not mention Shakspeare. 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocnhulary. — In Temple we meet with very few words that are 
not to be found in gnod modern prose. Rut some of the phrases 
and combinations are rather old-fashioned, — such as, " I am not in 
pain " for / «r?t laidcr no alarm ; " wits possessed of the vogue ; " 
" it is all a case " for it is all one ; " the liottom and rtach of the 
design," where a modern writer would probably say — " the founda- 
tion and object of the plot (or of the conspiracy) ;" " these spirits 
were fed and heightened" for " this state of feeling was inflamed 
(or encouraged)."— Any reader comparing Temple's diction with 
ordinary modern diction cannot fail to notice in how many cases 
Saxon exjjressions have been superseded by Latin. 

His style is sometimes decried as being tainted with Gallicisms. 
The accusation should be limited. In his 'Memoirs' he uses a 
good many French terms and turns — such as, " with all the lic-rt 
imaginable" (for secrety), '■'■ resentment oi kindness shown me" (for 
gratitnde), " this testimony is justly due to all that prartised him " 
(for all that had much intercourse with him). As Swift te!ls us, he 
used these expres.sions unconsciously, being led into them natu- 
rally fnmi carrying on di[>lomacy in French. But when the fault 
was pointed out to liim, he took pains to correct it, and, except in 
his ' ]\Iemoirs,' there are few tiaces either of French terms or of 
French idiom. 

Sentences. — Comparing Temple's composition with any pul.'/ioa- 
tion of anterior date, we remark that the placing of words is better 
attended to ; the cadence being more regularly tilled out, and the 
balance of the clauses more neatly finished. In especial, we remark 
a ])eculiar finish of pointed balance — gieater pains to bring two 
opposed words or phrases into corresponding places in the syntax 
of two successive clauses, and so more jMintedly direct attention to 
the antithesis. 

We must not suppose from Johnson's panegyric that Temple 
was the inventor of rhythmical 1,'alance and jKiint. It has been 
seen that these arts of style were practised under Elizabeth ; every 



322 FROM 1670 TO 1700. 

age, indeed, can produce nt least one rei)reseiitative of the pointed 
style. Temple's merit lies in improving and perfecting. In his 
composition the recurrence of clauses formed after the same model 
is more measured and regular. After reading a part of any of his 
highly finished passages, our ear comes to expect something more 
or less pointed in every sentence, and we are seldom disajipointed. 
Were the sulject-matter trifling, this would soon become tiresome; 
but as the matter is usually weighty, and the language dignified 
and varied, the play of antithesis is rather an agreeable addition. 

To illustrate the superior dignity and finish of his pointed sen- 
tences, one or two p:is.>ages may be quoted. Our quotations under 
this head are longer than usual, because this is really the chief 
distinction of the author's style. 

The following is from the Preface to his ' Observations on the 
United Provinces.' He is upholding the dignity of History : — 

"Nor are we to tliiiik Princes themselves losers, or less entertained, 
wlien we st-e them eiuploy tlu'ir time and tlu^ir tlion.i^hts in so nselul sjiecu- 
latioiis, and to so f,'iorioiis ends: tnit that rather thereby they attain their 
trne prerogative of lieing happier, as well as .greater, than siilijccts can be. 
For ail tlie pleasui-es of scn^e that any man can enj^y, are witliin the reach 
of a privaie lortune and ordinary contrivame ; grow fainter with age, and 
duller witii nse ; nmst be revived with intermissions, and wait upiin the 
ntui ns of appetite, whicii are no more at call of the rich than tiie poor. 
'J'he flashes of wit and good-humour that rise from the vapours of wine, are 
little ditferent fr.>ni tliose iliat jiroreed from the heats of blood in the first 
approaches of tVvers or frenzies, and are to be valued, but as (indeed) they 
are, the elfects of distemper. But the pleasures of imagination, as they 
heighten and refine the very ]ileasures of sense, so they are of laiger extent 
and longer duration ; and if tiie most sensual man will confess there is a 
pleasure in pleasing, he nnist likewise allow thtre is good to a man's self in 
d<iing good to others : and the further this extends the higher it rises, and 
the longer it lasts. Besides, there is beauty in order, and there are charms 
in well-deserved praise: and both are the greater by how much greater the 
subject ; as the first appearing in a well-framed and well-governed state, and 
the other arising from Unble and generous actions. Nor can any veins of 
good-humour be greater than those that swell by the success of wise counsels, 
and by the fortunate events of public atlaus ; since a man that takes ]ileasure 
in doing good to ten thousand, must needs have more than he that takes 
none but in doing good to himself." 

Our next ])assage is from the " Original and Nature of Govern- 
ment," expounding why the country population is less democratic 
than the town : — 

"The contrary of all this happens in countties thin inhabited, and espe- 
cially in vast Campaiiias, such as are extended through Asia and Afric, 
where there are fev/ cities besi«les what grow by the residence of the kings 
or their governors. The ])eople are poorer, and having little to lose, have 
litile to care for, and are less exposeii to the designs of power or violence. 
The assembling of persons, deputed from people at great distances one from 
another, is tronlde to them that are sent, and charge to them that send. 
And, where ambition and avarice have made no entrance, the di sire of leisure 



SIR WILLI.V.M TEMPLE. 323 

is much more natural tliaii of business and care ; besides, men conversincj all 
their lives with the wooils, and the fiehis, and the herds, niore than with 
one another, come to know as little as they desire ; use their senses a <;reat 
deal more than their reasons ; exaniitie not the nature or tiie tenure of 
])ower and authority; lind only they are tit to obey, because they are not 
fit to govern ; aud so come to submit to the will of" h;m they found in 
power, as they do to the will of heaven, anil consider all changes of con- 
ditions that haii)'en to them under good or bad Princes, like t;ood or ill 
seasons, that hapjien in the weather and the air." 

His letter of cimsolation to the Countess of Essex is one of his 
most finished |)rodnctinns. The following jiaragrajjh illustrates at 
once the ihythuiical finish of his style and the soundness of his 
judgment : — 

" But, Mad, nil, tlK)ugh religion were no party in your case, and that for 
80 violent .■ind injuiious a grief, you had nothing to answer to God, but only 
to the world aud yourself; yet, 1 very nuuh doubt, how you wmdd be 
acquitted. We bring into the world with us a ]ioor, needy, uncertain life, 
short at the longest, and un([uiet at the best ; all the imaginations of the 
witty and the s\ise have been perpetnally buried to find out the ways how 
to revive it with pleasures, or relieve it with diversions ; how to compose it 
with ease, and settle it with safety. To some of these ends have been em- 
)>Ioj'ed the institutions of lawgivers, the rea-onings of philosojdiers, the 
iuventions of poets, the ])ains of laliouring, and the extravagances of volup- 
tuous men. All the world is perpetually at woik nbout norldng else, but 
only that our poor mortal lives should p;iss the easier and happier for that 
little time we possess them, or else end the better when we lose them. Upon 
this occasion, riclu's came to be coveted, honours to be esteemed, li•iend^hip 
and love to be pursued, and virtues themselves to be admired in the world. 
Now, Madam, is it not to biil deliance to all mankind, to condemn their 
universal opinions and designs ; if, instead of passing your lite as well aud 
easily, you resolve to pass it as ill and miserably as yon can ? You grow 
insensible to the convenieii(;es of riidies, the delights of honour and praise, 
the I'harms of Idnduess or fiieud hip, nay to the observance or ajiplause of 
virtues tliemse*es ; for who (;an you expect, iu these e-xces'ses of pa-sion, 
will allow you to show either tempeMine or fortitude, to be either ]n-udent or 
just? and for youi- friends, I sujipose you reckon upon losing their kindness, 
wdn.'n you have sulliciently convinced them, they can never hope tor any of 
yours, since you have none left for yourself or anyihiug else. You declare 
upon all occasions, you are iiuuiyiable of receiving any comfort or pleasure in 
anything that is left in this world ; and, I assuie you, Madam, none can ever 
love you tliat can have no hopes ever to please you." 

The following is a balanced com[)arison between Homer and 
Virgil ; the order is well kei)t up : — 

" Homer was, without disiuite, the most universal genius that has been 
known iu the world, and Virgil the most a'coniplished. To the first nnist 
be allowed the most fertile invention, the riciiest vein, the most general 
knowlc'lge, ami ihe most lively exiiression ; to tlie hist, the noblest ideas, 
the iustest institution, the wisest conduit, and the choicest elocution. To 
speak in the painter's terms, we find, iu the works of Homer, the most spirit, 
force, and life; in those of Viigil, the best design, the truest pioportions, 
ami the greatest grace ; the colouring in botii seems ecpial, and indeed is in 
both admirable. Homer had more lire aud raptine, V'iigil more light and 



324 FROM 1670 TO 1700. 

swiftness ; or at least tlie poetical fire was more raging in one, but clearer in 
tl:e other, which makes the first more amazing, and the latter more agreeable. 
Tlie (ire was riclier in one, but in the other more refined, and lietter allayed 
to make uj) excellent woik. Ujion the whole, I think it must be confessed, 
that Homer was of tlie two, and jierhai'S of all others, the vastest, the 
sublimest, and the most; wonderful genius ; and that he has been generally 
so esieenii'd, there cannot be a greatci- testimony given, than what has been 
by .some ohserveil, that nut only the greates' masters have fouml in his works 
the best and trnest ])rinciples of all their sriences or arts, but that the 
rniblest nations liave derived from them tiie original of their seveial races, 
thciigh it be hardly yet agreed whether his story be true or a liction. In 
short, these two immortal poets mttst be allowed to have so much excelled 
in their kinds, as to have exceeded all comparison, to have even extin- 
guished emulation, and in a manner coniined true poetry, not only to their 
two languagts, but to their very persons." 

We have nnticed only the merits of Temple's sentences. These 
are not uniformly sustained. The sentence- structure of his * Mem- 
oirs ' is not so good. Our quotations are fair specimens of his 
general style, and even they have nut the grammatical accuracy 
and finish that Johnson iiftrodiiced into the language. In iiis 
* Memoirs ' he aims at 'Jliucydidean compactness and brevity, and 
so fa Is into the error of condensations tiiat are too forced, and 
sentences that are deficient in unity. I shall quote the most faulty 
condensation that I have observed : — 

" This, I suppose, gave the occasion for reflections upon what had passed 
in the course of my former cmbas.sies in Holland and at Aix ; and his 
Majesty, and his ministers, the resolution to send for me out of my private 
retreat, where I had passed two years (as I intended to do the rest of my 
liie), and to engai,'e me in going over into Holland, to make the seijarate 
peace with that State." 

raragraphs.—Owv author has a certain apprehension, however 
faint, of paragraph method. If we except Fuller,*he makes his 
paragraphs more orderly and consecutive than any writer before 
Johnscm. His Essay on the ' Original and Nature of Govern- 
ment' is a favourable example of his method. He has five large 
breaks, at each of which he introduces a new proposition. But 
the passages between the breaks are far from being perfectly con- 
secutive, or strictly confined to the subject enounced in the first 
proposition ; although, to do them justice, they are quite as orderly 
as many compositions of much later date. As an example of the 
minuter paragraph arrangement, may be quoted one of these larger 
divisions. It will be seen that the first paragrai)h is not a com- 
plete introduction, and that towards the end the arrangement be- 
comes more confused : — 

"Authority arises from the opinion of wisdom, goodness, and valour in 
the persons who possess it. 

"Wisdom is that which makes men judcre what are the best ends, and 
what the best means to attain them ; and gives a man advantage among the 



SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 326 

weak and the ignorant; as si2;lit among the blind, which is that of counsel 
and direction ; tliis gives aiitliDrity to age among the yonnger, till tliese 
begin at certain years to change tlieir opinion of the old and of themselves. 
Tiiis gives it more absolute to a pilot at st.-a, whom all tlie passengers suiTer 
to steer them as he pleases. 

" Goodness is tliat wiiicli makes men prefer their duty and their promise, 
before tlieir passions or their iiit(irist ; and is properly tlie object of trust: 
in our language it goes rather by the natne of honesty ; though what we call 
an lionest man, the Romans call a good man ; and honesty in tlieir language, 
as well as in French, rather signifies a composition of those qualities which 
geneially ae(iuire honour and esteem to tliose wlio possess them. 

" Valour, as it gives awe, and promises protection to those who want either 
heart or strength to defend themselves: this makes tlie authority of men 
among women ; and that of a master-buek in a nunuTous herd, though per- 
haps not strong enough for any two of them ; but the impression of single 
fear holds when they are all together by the ignorance of uniting. 

" Elo(|uence, as it passes ibr a maik of wisdom ; beauty of goodness, and 
nobility of valour (which was its original) have likewise ever some elfect 
upon the opinion of the jieople ; but a very gicat one, when they are really 
joined with the (jualities they jiromise or resemble. 

"There is yet auotlier source from which u.sually sprin<;s greater authority 
than from all the rest ; which is the o])inion of divine favour, or designation 
of the persons or of the races tiiat govern. This made the kings among the 
heathens ever derive themselves, or their ancestors, from some god; passing 
thereby for heroes — that i^, jiersons issued from tlie nd.xture of divine and 
human race, and of a midille nature between gods and men; others joined 
the mitre to the crown, and theieby the reverence of divine, to the respect 
of civil power. 

"Tliis made the Caliphs of Persia and Egypt, &c. 

" I'iety, as it is thought a way to the lavour of God, and fortune, as it 
looks like the efi'eet either of that, or at least of jirudence ami courage, beget 
authority. As likewise sfdendimr of living in great ]ialaees, with numerous 
attendance, mueh observanee, and riih habits dideiing from common men: 
both as it seems to be tiie reward of those virtues already named, or tlie effect 
of fortune ; or as it is a m;irk of being obeyed by many. 

" From all these authority arises, but is by nothing so much strengthened 
and conhrmed as by custom," &c. 

Figvres of Speech — Similitudes. — Temple and Cowley did much 
to confirm the reaction ayainst the indiscriminate figurative pro- 
fusion ot tlie preceding generations. Neither can be called ornate. 
But wliile they agree in using siiuili udes with motleration, they 
differ widely in another resjiect. Temple's similitudes are much 
mure apt and striking than Cowley's, and have not the same 
appeal aiice of being fetched from a distance. The}' are not light 
ornaments, but sub.^tantial additions, having usually both an illus- 
trative and an emotional force. 

One or two examples may be quote 1. Remarking on the in- 
terest attaching to the United Provinces, he says : — 

"And such a revolution as has since happened there, though it may have 
made these discourses a little important to his Majesty or his council ; yet it 
will not have rendered them less agreeable to commuu eyes, who, like men 



326 FliOM 1G70 TO 1700, 

that live near the sea, will nin out upon tlie cliffs to gaze at it in a storm, 
Ihourjh they would not look out of their icindow to see it in a calm." 

" I knew and esteemed a person abroad, wlio used to say, a man must be 
a mean wretch that desired to live after threescore years old. But so much, 
I doubt, is certain, that, in life, as in wine, he that will drink it good, must 
not draw it to the dregs. " 

"I have said that the excellency of genius must be native, because it can 
never ^row to any great height if it be only acquired or affected : but it must 
be ennobled by birth to give it more lustre, esteem, and authority; it must 
be cultivated by edui^ation and instruction, to improve its growth, and direct 
its end and application ; and it must be assisted by fortune, to preserve it 
to maturity. . . . Now, since so many stars go to the making up of 
this constellation, 'tis no wonder it has so seldom appeared in the world ; nor 
that when it does, it is received and followed with so much gazing, and so 
much veneration." 

Contrad. — We have seen that Temple makes abundant use of 
antithesis, and that he studies how to give antithesis effective point. 
In this {)lace we may quote some examples where the antithesis is 
more paradoxical and epigrammatic. His antitheses very often 
have an epigrammatic turn : — - 

" The subsidies from France bore no proportion to the charge of our fleets ; 
and our strength at sea sremed rather lesseiitnl than increased by the con- 
junction of thfirs : our seamen fought without heart, and were more afraid 
of their friiMids than their enemies ; and our discontents were so great at 
land, that the assembling of our militia to defend our coasts was thought as 
dangerous as an invasion." 

Concerning the Cabal, he drily remarks — "And thus, instead 
of making so great a king as they pretended by this Dutch War 
and French Alliance, they had the honour of making only four 
great sulyects." 

The Dutch having inundated their country to check the French 
invasion, he says that " they found no way of saving their country 
but by hjsing it." 

"Some ages produce many great men and few great occasions; other 
times, on the contrary, raise great occasions hut few or no great men." 

"Following this uncertain course, they succeeded, as such counsels must 
ever do: instead of pleasing all, tiiey pleased none ; and, aiming to leave no 
enemies to their settlement of Ireland, they left it no friends." 

Climax. — Our author's grave composed style is as far as possible 
opposed to abrupt and startling figures of speech, exclamation, 
apo.strophe, and suchlike. It is all the more compatil)le with the 
careful building up of climaxes. The reader will notice a steady 
graduation ancl culmination in every pa.ssage where the subject 
calls for more than usual stateliness. See under Strength, p. 329. 



SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 327 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. — This quality is inconipatil)le with the dignity and 
elevation of Temple's style. His diction is very difterent from the 
Iigl»t familiar diction of Cowley. 

In one respect he is more simple than Cowley. He is thoroughly 
free from the pedantry of supertiuous Latin quotations. This docs 
credit to his taste ; he was a scholar, and might have quoted. 
Dryden quotes a little, and prol);il)ly would have quoted more had 
he possessed the requisite sclu Jarship. Ko scholarly writer before 
Johnson makes so few Latin quotations as Temple. 

In the choice and treatment of subjects, he departs from the 
easy and familiar tracks. An Essay on the " Original and Nature 
of Crovernment" cannot be made so light and entertaining as an 
essay on Ambition. On subjects not naturally abstruse — in the 
' ^Memoirs ' of his diplomacy and in his ' Observations cm the United 
Provinces,' he writes with two aims more or less antagonistic to 
popular treatment — a desire to be thorough and a desire to be 
brief. He is not content with mentioning the chief and obvious 
circumstances that concur to an event ; while his compact pages 
want the easy ditfuseness of picturesque details. In this last 
respect particularly he differs from the po{)ular historians and 
essayists of our century : he condenses both narrative and exposi- 
tion at least three times as much. 

CLeaniess is a distinguishing quality of our author's style. He 
is both perspicuous and jirocise. We have spoken of the com- 
paratively good order of his paragra[)hs. His precision, for one 
whose works are not upon technical sul>jects, is no less remarkable. 
Writing with leisure and composure, he calmly chooses the aptcst 
words and simUitudes ; sober and sagacious, he seldom leaves his 
meaning open to doubt. 

We have already remarked the propriety of his similitudes. 
That he squared the circumstances of a comparison deliberately 
and not by accident, would appear from the following manipu- 
lation of a commonplace : — 

" Tlie comparison between a State and a ship has been so illustrated by 
poets and oiauns that 'tis liard to liml any point wheri'in they diller ; and 
yet tlity .-et'Mi to do it in tliis, tliat, in gieat storms and rongli seas, if all 
the men anil ladnii; roll to one sidi-, tin- ship will be in dan<;er uf oversettinj; 
by tlu'ir wtiniit : but, on tin; contiaiy, in tiie storms of State, if the body of 
the peo[de, with the hulk of estates, roll on oneway, the nation will bo safe. 
For the rest, tlie similitude holds." 

He shows great steadiness in keeping close to facts, rising above 
verbal quibbling, and calmly setting aside misleading associations. 
His rejection of the factitious simplicity of the scholastic division 



328 FUOM 1670 TO 1700, 

of governments into Monarchies, Aristocracies, and Democracies, 
showed no small power of looking beneath the surface to the un- 
derlying distinctions: his more accurate division was unheeded 
until revived and made precise by recent authorities. Many 
examples might be quoted of his steady superiority to plausible 
appearances and irrelevant disputes. The beginning of his essay 
on Poetry is not perhaps the best, but here it is : — 

" The two common shrines, to wliicli most offer up the application of their 
thoughts and tin-ir lives, are pi-ofit ami pleasure ; ami by tlieir devoti'ins to 
eitlier of these they are vulgarly distinguished into two sects, and called 
either busy or idle men. Wliether these terms differ in meaning or only 
in sound, I know very well may be disputed, and with appearance enough, 
since the covetous man takes ])erliaps as nuicdi pleasure in his gains as the 
voluj)tuiius does in his luxury, and would not pursue his business, unless he 
■were pleased with it, upon the la-.t account of what he most wishes and de- 
sires, nor would care for the increase of his fortunes, unless he therei)y pro- 
posed that of his pleasures too, in one kind or other ; so that plea-^ure may 
be said to be his end, whether he will allow to find it in his pursuit or no. 
Much ado there has been, many words spent, or (to speak with more res[)ect 
to the ancient jdiilosophers) many disputes have been raised upon this argu- 
ment, I think to little purpose, and that all has been rather an exercise of 
wit, tlian enquiry alter truth ; and all controversies, that can never eml, had 
better perhaps never begin. The best perhaps is to take words as they are 
most commonly spoken and meant, like coin, as it most currently passes, 
without raisiiig scruples upon tiie weight of the alloy, unless the eht-at or 
the defect be gross and evident. Few things in the world, or none, will bear 
too muc!i refining ; a thread too fine spun will easily break, and the })oiiit of 
a needle too finely filed. The usual acceptation takes proHt and j)leasure 
for two different things, and not only calls the Ibllowers or votaries of them 
by several names of busy and of idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of 
the mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first 
wisdom, and of the other wit. ... To the first of these are attributed 
the inventions or productions of thiiigs generally esteemed the most neces- 
sary, useful, or profitable to human life, either in private possessions or 
public institutions : to the other, those writings or discourses which are the 
most pleasing or entertaining to all that read or hear them." 

The following passage may be contrasted with Carlyle's theory 
of laughter : — 

" If it " (laughter) "were always an expression of good-humoui or being 
pleased, we should have reason to value ourselves more upon it ; btit 'tis 
moved by such different and contrary objects and affections, that it has 
gained little esteem, since we laugh at folly as well as wit, at accidents that 
vex us sometimes, as well as others that please us, and at the malice of apes, 
as well as the innocence of chiMren ; and the things thiit jdease us most, are 
af)t to make other sorts of motions both in our faces and hearts, and very 
different from those of laughter." 

Strength. — Our author's style lias a certain animation, arising 
chiefly from brevity and point. This is less felt in the severely 
didactic works, partly because the reader's attention is more 
heavily taxed, and partly because the writer, having an eye to 



SIR "WILLIAM TE.MPLli;. 329 

the main object of presenting the facts, is less able to attend to 
charms of expression. It is more decidedly pleasing in hia 
Letters, and in the lively essay on the " Cure of the Gout," 
^vhicll also is in the form of a htter. 

Not animation, however, but dignity, is the ruling character- 
istic. Of the general composiire and elevation of his tone, the 
nader will judge best fmm j)assages quoted without an eye to this 
I)articular quality. When the subject requires a more uitense or 
ii loftier tune, he answers easily to the call, providing liariiioni- 
ons language and imagery without any appearance of straining. 
Thus— 

"I liave sometimes thought, how it should liave come to pass, tliat the 
infinite swarm of that vast nortlRTii iiivo, whitli so oftim slmok the world 
like a gnat tempest, ami overllnwcd it like a loiri-iit ; t'liaiigiiig names, and 
customs, and giivernmeiit, autl language, and the very f'ai'e of nature, wher- 
ever they seated themselves; which, U|iiin record ol story, nudei- the name 
of Gauls, jiieiced into Greece and lialy, sacking Rume, and hesieging the 
Capitol in Camillus's time ; umler that of the Cimbers, marched through 
France to the very confines of Italy, dclemled by Marius; under iliat of Huns 
or Lombards, Visigoths, Goths, aid Vamhils, conquered the whole forces of 
the Koman em]iire, sacked Rome thi'ice in a suiall coinpa>s of years, seated 
tiiree kingdoms in Spam ami Afric, as well as Lijmliar<iy ; and undei' iliat 
of Danes or Normans, possessed themselves ol' England, a great part of 
France, and even of Maples and Sicily: how (1 say) ihese nations, which 
seemed to spawn in every age, an(i at some nitervals of tune discharged their 
own native countries of so vast numbers, and with such terror to the world, 
should, about seven or eight hundred years ago, leave off the use of these 
furious e.xi)eiiitions, as if on a sudden they should have grown baneu, or 
tame, or better contented with their own ill climates." 

Again, describing the spread of Mohammedanism : — 

"To be short, this contagion was so vicdent, that it spread from Arabia 
into Egyjit and Syria, and liis i)Ower increased with such a sudden growili 
as well as his doctrine, tliat he lived to see them overspread both those coun- 
tries, and a great {part of Persia; the decline of the old Koman empire mak- 
ing easy way for the poweiful ascent of this new comet, that appeared with 
such wonder and terror in the world, and with a llandng sword, niade way 
wherevtr it came, or laid all desolate that oj)posed it." 

The following long sentence may be quoted as an example of 
Bustaimd strength. No ordinary resources of language are needed 
to prevent a break-down in the conclusion of what opens with 
such grandeur. He is moralising on the victorious invasion of 
the Netherlands by Louis XIV. : — 

" "When we consider such a ]iower and wealth, as was related in the last 
chapter, to ha\e fallen in a nianner prostrate within the space of one month ; 
BO many troniier towns, renowned in the sieges ami actions of the Spanish 
wars, entered like open villages by tlie French troojjs, wiiiioul delence or 
almost denial ; most of them without any blows at all, and all of them with 
so few; their great rivers that were esteemed an invincible security to the 
jirovin^es of Holland and Utreclit, passed with as much ease, and as small 



330 FROM 1G7U TO 1700. 

resistaiicp, as little fords ; and in short, the very heart of a nation, so valiant 
of old against Rome, so obstinat(' against S[)ain, now sulnlned, and in a 
manner abandoning all before their danger appeared : we may jnstly liave 
our recourse to the secret nnd fixed ]teriods of all hiimau greatness, for 
the account of such a revohition ; or rather to the unsearchable decrees 
and ii resistible force of divine Providence; though it seems not more 
impious to question it, than to measure it by our scale ; or reduce the 
issues and motions of tliat eternal will and power to a conformity with 
what is esteemed just, or wise, or good, by the usual consent or the narrow 
comprehension of poor mortal men." 

Pathos. — In his grave treatises he is too composed and stately 
for the lively expression of affectiou, sorrow, or a fresh sense of 
beauty. Yet he never passes by a touching occasion wiihout 
some sign of feeling. The mood of the writer a})pcars in the 
temperate and refined mournful ness of the language. Thus — 

"The noblest spirit of g^-nius in the world, if it falls, though never so 
bravely, in its first enterprisi's, cannot deserve enough of mankind to pre- 
tend to so great a reward as tlie esteem of heroic virtue. And yet perhaps 
many a person has died in the first battle or adventure he achieved, and 
lies buried in silence and oblivion ; who, had \w outlived as many dangers 
as Alexander did, might have bhined as bright in honour and fame." 

" When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a 
froward (dii'd, that nuist be ]ilayed wiih and humoured a little to keep it 
quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." 

Wit. — As under Strength passages may be singled out where 
the grave vigour and dignity of his style gains the ascendancy, 
and soars into a loftier strain, so under Wit we may single out 
passages where his pointed animation gains the ascendancy, and 
becomes keener and more sparkling. 

He is too grave and temperate to turn anybody or anything into 
violent ridicule. The fine flavour of poliahed wit is always upper- 
most. The following is an example : — 

"A man that tells me my opinions are absurd or ridiculous, impertinent 
or unreasonable, because they differ from hi-^, seems to intend a quariel in- 
stead of a dispute, and calls me fool or madman with a little more circum- 
stance, tliough, jicrlaps, I pass for one as well in my senses as lie, aa 
pertinent in talk, and as prudent in life; yet tliese are the cnnitnon civili- 
ties, in religiouh argument, of sullieient and conceited men, who talk much 
of light reason, and mean always their own ; and ma]<e their iiri\ate imag- 
ination the measni'e of general truth. But sui h language determines all 
between us, and the disjiute comes to end in three words at last, v\hich it 
might as well have ended in at first, That he is in the right, and I am in 
the wrung." 

Examples of his more genial point are to be found chiefly in 
his letters. The essay on the "Cure of the Gout" is written 
in a sprightly vein. For example : — 

" All these things put together, with what a great physician writes of 
cures by whipping with rods, and another with holly, and by other cruel- 



SIR WILLIAM TF.MrLE. 331 

tios ofcuttincj and hiirning, made me certainly conclude, that the ^'ont was 
a coiniiaiiioii that oui^ht to he treated like an enemy, and by no means like 
a friend, and tliat grew tronhlesome chiefly by good usage ; and tliis was 
conlirnied to me by considering that it liaunted usually the easy and the 
rirh, the nice and the lazy, who grow to endure much, because tliey can 
endure litth^ ; tliat make nnich of it as soon as it comes, and yet leave not 
making mui'h of themsidves too ; that take care to carry it ju'esently to bed, 
and keep it safr- and warm, ami imleed lay np the gout for two or three 
months, while tiiey give out that the gout lays up them. On the other 
side it hardly approaches tlie rough an<l the poor, such as labour for meat, 
and eat only for hunger ; tliat drink water, either pure or but discoloured 
with malt ; that know no use of wine, but for a cordial, as it is, and per- 
hajis was only intended: or if such men happen by their native constitu- 
tions to fall into the gout, either they mind it not at all, having no leisure 
to be sick ; or they use it like a dog, they walk on, or they toil and work as 
they did before, they keep it wet and cold ; or if they are laid up, they aro 
perhaps forced by that to fast more than before, ami if it lasts, they grow 
impatient, and fall to beat it, or whip it, or cut it, or burn it; and all this 
while, perhaps, never know the very name of gout." 

Taste. — As might be inferred from his character, our author's 
style is very higlily refined. Aft'ectation of terms or phrases, 
abruptness, extravagance, maudlin sentimentality, coarse invec- 
tive, are as foreign as may be to liis characteristic manner. If 
the standard of a good English style is tlie style tliat shall please 
the majority of educated Englishmen, he errs on the side of too 
great refinement. In many respects he is a contrast to Alacaulay, 
still more to Carlyle. 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION' 

Narrative. — Tn a preface to the third part of Temple's ' INTem- 
oirs,' Swift claims him as the first Englishman " (at least of 
any consequence) who ever attempted that manner of writing." 
Though it is a personal record, the style, as already noticed, is not 
gossi[)ping and diffuse, but on the contrary compact and brief to 
the verge of abstruseness. As the principal actor in some of the 
transactions, he liad exceptional advantages for knowing the hid- 
den springs of events. 

At one time he intended to write a History of England, having 
often felt the want of a good general history, and being far from 
satisfied with the Chroniclers. Oldiged by pressure of other em- 
ployments to abandon this design, he coin[)leted an ' Introduction 
to the History of England,' " from the first originals, as far as he 
could find any ground of probable story, or of fair conjecture," 
" through the great and memorable changes of names, people, 
ciistoms, and laws that passed here, until the end of the first 
Koiman reign." The work is instructive, abounding in sagacious 
criticism of social ami jiolitiral institutions. It is interesting to 
contrast his views of history with Macaulay's : — 



332 FKOM 1670 TO 1700. 

" I have likewise omitted the accounts and remarks wherein some writers 
have busied their pens, of strani^e comets, inclemencies of seasons, raging 
diseases, or de|ilorable tires that are said to have happened iu this age and 
kingdom ; and are represented by some ;is judgments of God upon the king's 
reign, because I rather esteem tneni accidents of time or chance, suidi as 
happen in one part or otii(>r of the world, perhaps every age, at some periods 
of time, or from some influence of stars, or by the cons])iring of some natu- 
ral or casual circumstances, and neither argue the virtues or vices of princes, 
nor serve for example or instruction to posterity, which are ihe great ends 
of history, and ougut to be the chief care ol all historians." 

His ' Observations upon the United Provinces of the Nether- 
lands ' is an example of a conspectus, or general view of a state of 
society in all its parts at a particular time. It is a model of pains- 
taking observation and search, and is full of sagacious remarks. 
After recounting the rise and progress of the Federation, he 
delineates their condition towards 1672 under six heads : — their 
Government^ their Situation, their People and Dispositions, their 
Religion, their Trade, their Forces and Revenues. The perform- 
ance is very different from the third chapter of Macaulay's 
History. It is as severely didactic and thorough as Macaulay's 
is pictorial and superficial. 

JOHN DEYDEIT, 1631-1700. 

From the beginning to the end of his poetical career, Dryden, 
not content to leave his works to the chances of criticism, loved 
to defend in prose his princi])les of com[)osition, and issued hardly 
anything without an apologetic or explanatory preface or dedica- 
tion. In this casual form he has left some ingenious s|)ecial 
pleading for his own practice, as well as many valuable remarks 
on his predecessors, and interesting comparisons of the most 
eminent names. Besides tliese stray pieces, he published, in 
1668, a formal 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy' — "a little discourse 
in dialogue, for the most part borrowed from the observations 
of others" — which, says Johnson, "was the first regular and 
valuable treatise on the art of writing." It is now interesting 
chiefly for its defence of rhyming in tragedies — a style abandoned 
in the author's later works. It also contains some clever argu- 
ment in favour of the superiority of modern to ancient play- 
writers. 

After his conversion to the Catholic Church, he was employed 
by James II. to defend against Stillingfleet a paper found in the 
strong box of the deceased king, jiurporting to be written by the 
Duchess of York in explanation of her departure from the Pro- 
testant faith. In this controversy there was little that could be 
called argument on either side — it wns very much like other con- 
troversies of that time, a pitched battle of abuse ; and Dryden, in 



JOHN DKYDEN. 333 

the exuberant and careless " horseplay " of his raillery, laid himself 
fatally open to the cool retorts of his antagonist. 

In the list of his prose works are included two translations from 
the French — Bouhours' 'Life of Francis Xavier' (16S7), and Du 
Fresnoy's 'Art of Painting' (1695). He also wrute the life of 
Plutarch prefixed to what is knowu as ' f )ryden's Translation ' of 
Plutarch's Lives. But the only prose works of his that are now 
read are his Prefaces and the ' Es.^ay of Dramatic Poesy.' 

The fact that these are still worth reading has beeu fixed in our 
minds by Byron's happy doggerel lines — 

" Read all the Prefaces of Dryilen, 
For these tlie critics miicli coiilide in, 
Tliougli only writ at first for filling, 
To raise tiiO volume's piiie a sliilUng." 

Dryden's prose, as well as Temple's, is a maiked improvement 
on the prose of the Commonwealth generation. His ex})res.sions 
have not the curious felicity of Cowley's ; but the sentences are 
much more flowing. He displays to some extent what Dr Blair 
considered such a beauty in Temple's com[)Osition — the " har- 
monious pause," the measured sentence of several members. He 
aims very much at antithetic point, reserving emphatic statements 
for the close of the sentence, and practising occasionally the abrupt 
introduction of a general statement before its application is known. 
The peculiarities of his sentence-structure may be studied in the 
following extract from his Preface to 'Absalom and Achitophel,' 
published in 1681 : in it we see the rudiments of certain abrupt 
arts of style more fully developed by Johnson and Macaulay : — 

"It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem : some will 
think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I am 
.sure, is honest; but lie who draws his pen for one ]';irty must cxjiect to 
make enemies of the otiier: for wit and fool are coiisecpients of Whig and 
Tury ; and every man is a knave or an ass to the contiaiy side. Tliere is a 
treasury of merit in the Fanatic church, as well as in the Pojiish, and a 
pennyworth to be had of saintsliip. honesty, and poetry, ior the lewd, the 
lartiou>, and the blocklieads : but tlie longest chapter in Deuteronomy hag 
not curses enongli for an Anti-Hrondngham. Jly comfort is, tlieir manifi'st 
prejudice to my cause will render tlnir judgment of less authority against 
me. Yet if a poem have genius, it will foice its own reception in the world ; 
for there is a sweetness in gooil verse wliich tickles even while it hurts; and 
no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against liis will. 
Tlie commendation of adversaries is the gn-attst trium]ih of a wiiter, be- 
cause it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied m mort- easy 
terms: if I happen to jdease the more moderate .sort, I shall be sine of an 
honest party, and in all probability of the best judges ; for the least con- 
cerned are probably the least corrupt. And I confess I have laid in for 
those, by reliating the satire (where justice would allow it) front carrying 
too .sharp an edge. They who c.ui critirise i-o wi-akly us to imagine I have 
done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that 1 can write 
severely with more ease than I can gently. I have but laughed at some 



334 FROxM 1670 TO 1700. 

men's follies, where I couLl have dediimel ac^ainst their viees ; and other 
men's virtues I liave commended as freely as 1 have taxt^d tlieir crinirs. 
. . . The violent on both sides will condemn tlie character of Absalom, 
as either too favourably or too hardly drawn : bnt they are not tlie violent 
whom I desire to please. The fault, on the other hand, is to extenuate, 
palliate, and indulge ; and, to confess freely, I have endeavo-ired to commit 
it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a j^reater for his heroic 
virtues ; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man's 
life than I would be of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures 
are always the most easy, and, as being such, are the soonest perverteil by ill 
counsels, especially when baited with lame and i^l Ty, it is no more a wonder 
that he witlistooil not the temptatioiis of Achitopliel, than it was for Adam 
not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent and the womnn. The con- 
clusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not 
obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate. The frame of it was cut 
out but for a picture to the waist, and if the draught be so far true, it is as 
much as I designed. 

"Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I shoiild certainly 
conidude the piei;e with the reconcilement of Absalom to David ; and who 
knows but this may come to pass ; things were not brought to an extreuiity 
where I left the story ; there seems yet to be room left for a composure, here- 
after there may l>e only for pity. I have not so nmch as an uncharitable 
wish against Acliito|)hel. but am content to be accused of a good-natured 
error, and to hope, with Origen, that the devil himself may at last be saved; 
for which reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in 
order, nor to dis[)ose of his person afterwards as he in wisdom shall think 
fit." 

Dryden had no idea of observing paragraph law ; his genius was 
the reverse of methodical. He r.imbles on, making a point here 
and a point there, and dashing heartily away from his immediate 
sulyect whenever he sees an opening for his vigorous wit. His 
prose has something of the irregular zigzag lightning vigour and 
sijlendoiir of his verse. Any one reading his prose fragments 
for the strokes of comprehensive terseness, brilliant epigram, and 
happy aptness of expression, should be on their guard against the 
infection of his negligent manner ; none should take it for granted 
that their genius is, like his, sufficient to hide any number of 
irregularities. 

The following remarks on Laughter, from his 'Parallel between 
Poetry and Painting,' prefixed to the translation of Du Fresnoy, 
exemplify his rather incoherent agglomeration of vigorous sen- 
tences : — 

"Laughter is indeed the propriety of a man, but just enough to distin- 
guish him from his elder brother with lour legs. It is a kind of bastard 
pleasure too, taken in at the eyes of the vulgar gazers, and at the ears of the 
beastlv audience. Church painters use it to divert the honest countryman 
at public ]irayers, and keep his eyes open at a heavy sermon ; and fai'ce 
scribblers make use of the same nolile invention, to entertain citizens, 
country-gentlemen, and Covent Garden fops. If they are merry all goes 
well on the poet's side. The belter sort go thither too, but in des^iair of 
sense and the just images of nature, which are the adequate pleasures of the 



JOHN DRYDEN. 335 

mind ; but the author can give the stage no better than what wms given him 

by iiatuie ; and tlie actors must represent such tilings as tlicy are capable to 
jiiTliHiii, and by which l)oih they and the serilibhr may get their living. 
Aftti' ;dl, it is a good thing to laugh at any rate ; and it a straw can tickle 
a man, it, is an instrument of liappiness. Beasts cau vveei) when tliey suffer, 
but they cannot laugh." 

His remarks on Invention are more to the purpose : — 

"The principal parts of painting and poetry next follow. Invention is 
the tirst part, and alisolutely necess.iry to them both ; yet no rule ever was 
or ever can t'C given, how to compass it. A hajipy genius is the gift of 
nature : it depends on the influence of the stars, say the astrologers ; on the 
organs of the body, sav tlie naturalists ; it is the ]>articular gilt of heaven, 
say the divines, both Christians and heathens. How to improve it, many 
boi'kb can teach us ; how lo obtain it, none ; that nothing can be done witli- 
out it, all agi'ee — 

Tu nihil invila dices faciesiv Minerva. 

"Without invention, a jiaintor is but a copier, and a poet but a phigiary of 
otheis. Hoth are allowed sometimes to copy, and translate; but as our 
author tells you, that is not the best part of their re]intat;on. ' hnitators 
are but a servile kind of cattle,' says the jioet ; or at best, the keepers of 
Cattle for other men ; they liave notiiing which is properly their own : that 
is a suliicient mortiiication for me, while I am translating Virgil. But to 
copy the best authnr, is a kind of ]naise, if I perform it as I ou^ht ; as a 
copy alter lialiaelle is more to be commended than an original of any inilil- 
ferent painter." 

And yet, on principle, he was opposed to unnecessary digressions 
on the larger scale : — 

"As in the comjiosition of a picture the painter is to take care that 
nothing enter into it which is not proper or convenient to the subject, so 
likewise is the poet to reject all incidents wliicli aie foreign to his poem and 
are naturally no parts ot it; they are wens and other excrescences, which 
belong not to the body, but deform it. No person, no incident in the piece 
or in the I'lay, but must be of use to carry on the nniin design. All things 
else are like six fingers to the hand, when nature, which is superfluous in 
nothing, cau do her work with five. A painter must reject all tiifling orna- 
ments, .so must a jioet refuse all tedious and unnecessary descriptions. A 
role which is too heavy is less an ornament than a burthen." 

"We might expect to find the prose diction of a poet highly 
coloured, and profusely embellished with imagery. Dryden's is 
the reverse of this — familiar, clear, vigorous, and full of epigram- 
matic point. "I have endeavoured," he says, "to write English 
a.s near as I could distinguish it from the tongue of pedants and 
that of affected travellers." He expressly apologises for the 
"poetical expressions" in his translation of D\\ Fresnoy ; he 
"dares not promise that some of them are not fustian, or at least 
hi-hly metaphorical," but the fault lay with the original. 

There is little geniality in his style ; he knew as well as any- 
body where his power lay, and he said of himself that "he could 
write severely witii more ease than he could write gently." When 



336 FROM 1670 TO 1700. 

he girds on his sword for a sarcastic onslauglit, he goes to \\orlc 
with all his heart. In the controversy with StillingUeet, his in- 
tense feeling sometimes betrays him into bare unadorned abuse; 
he calls his adversary, by coni[)arison with " the meekness, devo- 
tion, and sincerity" of the pious lady's declaraticm, "disingenuous, 
foul-mouthed, and shuffling." But this is a passage of exceptional 
heat ; most of the sarcasm is clothed in fresh and splendid lan- 
guage, and takes the form of rough but brilliant wit, throwing his 
tamer rival into the shade : indeed, had his cause not been so hope- 
lessly unpopular, the attack would have been overwhelming. 



OTHER WRITERS. 

THEOLOGY. 

The most eminent divine in the early part of this period was 
Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), a man of extremely fertile and versatile 
talents. He was the son of a linen-draiier in London. In 1649 he 
was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and for some 
time thereafter studied medicine. In 1652 he was a candidate for 
the Greek Professorship, but was disap[>ointe I. He then spent 
some years in travelling along the shores of the Mediterranean. 
In 1660 he again tried for the same post, and was successful. He 
had been but two years Professor of Greek when he discovered 
his preference for mathematics by accepting the Professorship 
of Geometry in Gresham College. In 1663 he was appoii..;ed 
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in Cambridge. In 1669, 
having not yet found his life-work, he vacated his professorship 
in favour of his pupil Isaac Newton, and thereafter devoted 
himself exclusively to divinity. In 1670 he was made D.D. by 
royal mandate, receiving at the time a high compliment from the 
lips of the King. In 1672 he was nominated to the Mastership of 
Trinity. He published several mathematical works in Latin. 
His English writings are all theological, consisting of seventy- 
seven Sermons ; Expositions of the Apostles' Creed, The Lord's 
Prayer, The Decalogue, &c. ; a 'Treatise on the Pope's Suprem- 
acy;' and a 'Discourse concerning the Unity of the Church.' 
" He was in person of the lesser size, and lean ; of extraordinary 
strength, of a fair and calm complexion, a thin skin, very sensible 
of the cold ; his eyes grey, clear, and somewhat short-sighted ; his 
hair of a light auburn, very fine and curling." He was abstracted 
in his manner, and of slovenly habits. Anecdotes are told of his 
personal courage and presence of mind. He was a great smoker, 
and an immoderate eater of fruit. He died of fever, to which he 
was subject. The most striking things in his sermons are the 
extraordmary copiousness and vigour of the language, and the ex- 



TIIFOLOGY. .T37 

haustiveness and subtlety of the thought. He is a perfect mine 
of varied and vigorous expression. His sentences are thrown up 
with a rough careless viuour ; an extreme antithesis to the poli>hed 
flow of language and ideas in Addison. In his love of scrupulous 
definitions and qualiticatinns we discover the matiieniatician ; he 
divides and subdivides with Baconian minuteness, and in drawing 
parallels adjusts the compared pnrticnlars with acute exactness. 

Tlie simple and felicitous diction of John Tillotson, Archbi>hop 
of Canterbury (1630-1694), was praised by Dry den and by Addison, 
and long held up as a model. ^ Lorn in York-shire, of Puritan 
p.irents, he was educated at Cambridge, submitted to the Act of 
Uniformity in 1662, and entered the Church. Going to London 
in 1663, his preaching soon drew attention, and he was rapidly 
promoted. At the Revolution he was made Dean of St Paul's, 
and in 1691 was raised to the supreme height of ecclesiastical dig- 
nity. He was a man of great moderation and good sense, without 
excitability or enthusiasm, " loving neither the ceremony nor the 
trouble of a great place." Though he received preferment in the 
reign of Charles, he was not an extravagant royalist : his wife was 
the niece of Oliver Cromwell, and daughter-in law of liishop Wil- 
kins. Pieady to serve his friends, he was literary executor to 
Wilkins and to Barrow, gave an opinion on Burnet's 'History of 
the Leformation ' before it was published, and edited the ' Dis- 
courses ' of Dr Hezekiah Burton. A good, easy, clear-headed 
man, with not a little of the character of Paley. The merits of 
his style are simplicity, and a happy fluency in the choice and 
combination of words. He probably had no small influence in 
forming the style of Addison. The defects are considerable. In 
his easy way he lingers upon an idea, and gives two or three 
expressions where one would serve the purpose ; passing on, he 
rambles l)ack auain, and presents the idea in several other differ- 
ent aspects. The result is an enfeebling tautology and want of 
method. Taken individually, the expressions are admirably easy 
and felicitous ; but there are too many of them, and they are ill 
arranged. 

Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), made Bishop of Worcester in 
1689, was much before the public as a controveisialist during this 
period. He fought against Atheists, Unitarians, Papists, and Dis- 
senters, and rendere 1 distinguished service to his cause. His best- 
known engagements were with Dryden and Locke. Against Dry- 
den, though far inferior in style, he had the best of the argument ; 

1 Drj'den is said to liave "ownierl with pleasure that if he had i,Tiy talent for 
Enelisli prose it was owing to his lia\iii^' olteii read tlie writings of Anhliisliop 
Tillotson." Tliis is liut a raiidoiu loiuiiliinent ; Dryden showed his talent for 
English prose before Tillotson liad i^ublished a line, and long before be became 
fainoii.s. 



338 FROM 1670 TO 1700. 

but in the encounter with Locke he sustained a defeat so signal and 
humiliating that it was said to have hastened his death. He wrote 
with great vignur, but his expressions are neither original nor fe- 
licitous. To a modern reader his manner seems too arrog.int and 
personal to be persuasive. Although Clarendon professes himself 
" exceedingly delighted with the softness, gentleness, and civility 
of his language," this word-praise is not borne out by facts ; there 
is no evidence that he had Tillotson's power of bringing over 
opponents. 

William Sherlock (1641-1707), who succeeded Tillotson as Dean 
of St Paul's, was another champion of the Church against dissent 
and infidelity, and wrote a 'Vindication of the Trinity' in 1691; 
but he is now known only by his devotional works. His ' Dis- 
course concerning Death' is a standing article in second-hand 
book-stalls. This continued popularity is due more to the matter 
than to the manner. His son Thomas was more distinguished than 
himself. 

Sherlock's 'Vindication' was attacked with great wit and fury 
by a man far his superior in literary genius, Robe't South (1633- 
1716). South, a brilliant Oxonian scholar, the son of a London 
merchant, was an ultra-royalist, appointed at the Restoration Pub- 
lic Orator of his University, and chaplain to the Earl of Clarendon. 
He accompanied Lawrence Hyde to Poland in 1676. On his re- 
turn he was presented to the rectory of Isli|>, and, having some 
private fortune, steadily declined further preferment. He has 
been called the last of ♦he gieat English divines of the century. 
A quick and ]iowerful intellect, solid erudition, a superlative com- 
mand of homely racy English, and wit of unsurpassed brilliancy, 
make a combination that, in a literary point of view, places the 
possessor at least on a level with 'I'aylor and Barrow. Doubtless 
his fame would have been equal to his powers had he not mistaken 
his vocation. He shows little religious earnestness, and without 
that, devotional, and even controversial, religious works can hardly 
pretend to the first rank. He was an earnest Churchman, but not 
an earnest Christian. Against sectaries his abuse was hearty and 
hot — -"villanous arts," " venomous gibberish," "treacherous cant," 
"a pack of designing hypocrites," are samples of his phrases. 
Satirical wit is his distinguishing quality. Even his sermons are 
brilliantly lighted up with Hashes of ingenious mockery; he was 
always glad to have a victim. 

Thomas Sprat, D.D. (1636-1713), Fellow of Wadham, Bishop of 
Pioehester, friend and biographer of Cowley. Besides his ' Life of 
Cowley,' he wrote a ' History of the Royal Society,' of which he 
was a member, as well as sermons and political tracts. He is 
praised by Macaulay as "a great master of our language, and pos- 
sessed at once of the eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist, 



THEOLOGY. 339 

and of the historian." He also receives a high tribute from John- 
son. There is indeed a certain flow and rotund finish about his 
diction. Some of his sentences would pass for Johnson's. Had 
the matter been more substnntial, he might h;t\'e taken a higher 
place in our literature ; but he was a good genial fellow, rather 
fond of the bottle, and his lubricated eloquence perished with 
him. 

Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), Master of the Charter -house, is 
known in literature by his ' Sacre I Theory of the Earth ' (pub. in 
Latin 1680, in English 1691). It is the outcome of a poetic mind 
excited by the gathering interest in physical science. The theory 
is merely a framework for extravagant sublimities of description. 
He re|iresents the antediluvian globe as disposed in regular con- 
centric belts, the heavy solid parts in the centre, then the liquid, 
then on the top of the liquid a floating crust of solidified oily mat- 
ter, " even and uniform all over," without rocks or mountains, 
"wrinkle, scar, or fracture." On this smooth surface, fresh, fruit- 
ful, overhung by a calm and serene atmosphere, men lived till the 
Flood ; that calamity was caused by the generation of steam in the 
subterraneous water and the rupture of the crust, when " the whole 
fabric broke," and tumbled in fragments into the abyss. The 
accounts of the Flood and of the final conflagration of the existing 
earth are given in language worthy of such bold and spacious con- 
ceptions. 

Of little importance in literature, but of considerable importance 
in the history of opinion, are the two chief literary defenders of 
the Quaker faith, Will-iam Penn (1644-1718), and Robert Barclay 
(1648-1690), both men of good position by birth. Penn, the son of 
an admiral, imbibed the proscribed views at Oxford, and was ex- 
pelled the University. A course of travel on the Continent made 
him a fine gentleman again ; the Plague reconverted him ; a trip 
to Ireland restored him to fashionable circles; a sermon from an 
old master converted him a third time. This last conversion was 
in 1668 : from that date he remained Quaker for life. In 1669 ha 
was imprisoned for eight months. For some years thereafter his 
life was prosperous. He was reconciled to his father, who left him 
a good estate, and some claims on the Government, in liquidation 
of which he received a grant of Pennsylvania in America. In the 
later years of Chailes and under James he was a great favourite at 
Court : his conduct there is assailed by ^Macaulay and warndy de- 
fended by Paget and others. The remaining thirty years of hia 
life were spent in private, not a little imbittered by personal griefs 
and losses. — Barclay was a Scotsman, of the family of Barclay of 
Ury. He several times suffered imprisonment. His works aie, 
'Truth Cleared of Calumnies,' 1670; and 'An Apology for the 
People called in scorn Quakers.' Neillier Penn nor Barclay has 



340 FUOM 1670 TO 170i). 

any special grace or vigour of style. Penn is lively and pointed, 
Barclay grave and argumentative. 

Thomas EUwood (1639-1713), another of the Quakers, a meek, 
industrious man, of a feeble constitution, is interesting, not from 
his style, but from his intercourse with Milton. He vpas one of 
the blind poet's readers. He w^rote an autobiography, aud contro- 
versial and devotional treatises. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

John Locke (1632-1704). The famous author- of the * Essay on 
the Human Understanding' (pub. 1690) was the son of a small 
/iroprietor in the west of England. He took the degree of B.A. at 
Oxford in 1655, and was elected a student of Christ Church. His 
chief studies were medicine and physical science, on which subjects 
he became an authority. His approbation of Sydenham's theory 
of acute diseases was considered worth boasting of by this " father 
of English medicine"; and he signified a desire to succeed, in the 
event of a vacancy, to the Physic Professorship at Gresham Col- 
lege. His chief patron was the Earl of Shaftesbury. He divided 
his time between Oxford and London, living in the most cultivated 
society. He spent four years in France. When Shaftesbury's 
fortunes declined, Locke also fell into difficulties with the Govern- 
ment, and had to take refuge in Holland. While there he wrote 
in Latin his famous 'Letter on Toleration.' After the Revolution, 
having recommended himself by his liberal princi])les, he was re- 
warded with the Commissionership of Stamps; and also held for five 
years a more lucrative office as one of the Commissioners of Trade. 
His 'Two Treatises on Government,' opposing the divine right of 
kings, and advancing the ideas of a social compact and of the 
natural rii^hts of man, appeared in 1690. In the same year were 
published the Essay, and the 'Treatise on Education.' The 'Con- 
duct of the Understanding ' was not published till after his death. 
Locke's health was never robust ; an elder brother died young of 
consumption, and he himself, in spite of the utmost care, died of a 
decline. He was an agreeable, well-bred man, a sprightly talker, 
and fond of company chiefly for the pleasures of talking. At col- 
lege he associated with the lively and agreeable in preference to 
the scholarly. He was frugal, and regular in his habits. His 
sagacity and powers of expression were very great. All the works 
above mentioned drew immediate attention, and are still read by 
everybody professing an acquaintance with their topics. He is 
one of the most simple of philosophical writers. Authorities com- 
plain that this popular simplicity is bought at the expense of ex- 
actness ; that his use of terms is vacillating ; and that his notious 
are ill defined. 



HISTORY. 341 

I 

The learned Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), a student of Cam- 
bridge, and Professor of Hebrew there from 1645 to 1675, pub- 
lished in 1678 his 'Intellectual System of the Universe.' He 
seems to have been a shy, retiring man, with something of Hooker's 
disposition; like Hooker, also, an industrious and profound scholar. 
He was not of a controversial turn, but was pressed by his friends 
to take the field against Hobbes, atheism, and every form of 
heterodoxy. He stated the opinions of his opponents at such 
length and with such candour that his sincerity was suspected ; 
and he was so alarmed at the outcry raised by his honourable and 
ingenious fashion of polemic, that he refrained from further [lubli- 
cation. His ' Treatise of Eternal and Immutable Morality ' was 
not published till 1731. 

Another ojiponent of Hobbes was Richard Cumberland (1632- 
1718), lUshop of Peterborough, author of a work on the ' Laws of 
Nature.' His doctrines have an independent place in the history 
of philosophy ; but as he wrote in Latin, he has but a quasi-legiti- 
mate btauding in the history of English literature. 

HISTORY. 

Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury, an active poli- 
tician, and author of several religious and other works known only 
to antiquarians, received the thanks of Parliament for his ' History 
of the Peformation ' in 1676, and earned a durable fame by his 
posthumous 'History of my own Times, from the Kestoration of 
Charles II. to the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, in 
the Reign of Queen Anne.' He belonged to an ancient Aberdeen- 
shire family, and was educated at Marischnl College, Aberdeen. 
At the age of twenty-six (1669) he was made Professor of Divinity 
in Glasgow, and before he was thirty he was twice offered a Scot- 
tish bishopric. About 1673 he resigned his professorial chair and 
went to London, where his jjowers as a preacher, no less than as a 
sagacious obsei-ver of politics, soon made him consj)icuous. During 
the reign of James, he thought it prudent to retire to the Con- 
tinent, and received a flattering invitation to the Hague. He 
came back with the Prince of Orange, and in 16S9 was appointed 
Bishop of Sarum. He was a shrewd, sagacious Scotchman, and 
throughout life acted with a prudence that was disturbed neither 
by impetuosity nnr by strong feeling. Yet he displayed at times 
a steady courageous sincerity wiieie many of the sneerers at his 
prudence would have kept discreetly in the background. He had 
a peculiar power of reading character, and of insinuating himself 
into the confidence of the great. A tall, well-built, fine-looking 
man, with extraordinary powers of extenq>ore address, he was one 
of the most popular preachers of the metropolis : he " was often," 



342 FROM 1670 TO 1700. 

i 

says Macaulay, " interrupted by the deep hum of his audience ; 
and when, after preaching out the hour-glass, he held it up in his 
hand, tlie congregation clamorously encournged him to go on till 
the sand had run off once more." Natural temper and varied 
education concurred to make his views anti-desj)otic ; he was a 
steady sujiporter of the Revolution; hy his considerate behaviour 
he made himself extremely popular among the clergy of his diocese. 
We have evidence that he was careful al'out his written style, pur- 
posely aiming at "aptness of words and justness of figures," and 
striving to avoid " the fulsome pedantry under which the English 
language laboured long ago, the trifling way of dark and unin- 
telligible wit that came after that, the coarse extravagance of 
canting that succeeded this, and the sublime jiitcli of a strong but 
false rhetoric, which ha<l much corrupted not only the stage but 
even the pulpit, but was almost worn out" when he wrote.^ He 
may be said to have realised this ideal ; his words are generally 
well chosen, his illustrations appropriate, and his diction copious 
without being in any way extravagant ; but his dry correctness is 
not made up for by fluent melody or by happy originality of com- 
bination. The great charms of his ' History of my own Times ' lie 
in the gossip from behind the scenes, and the skilful delineation 
of character. He had something of Boswell's faculty for noting 
characteristic incidents, besides the power of showing them biiefly 
in a connected portraiture. None of our historians surpass, if any 
equal him, in this respect. When we compare his vivid delinea- 
tions of the men of the Revolution with Macaulay's jumble of 
characteristic traits and high-flown moral commonplaces, we at 
once recognise the hand of a natural master of the art. 

Along with Burnet may be mentioned Sir George Mackenzie 
(1636-1691), Lord Advocate under Charles II. and James II., author 
of ' iSIemoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, from the Iiestoration of 
Charles II.,' not printed till 182 1. Mackenzie was familiar with 
Dryden and the literary society of the time, and wrote several 
lively miscellaneous essays : " The Virtuoso or Stoic," " jMoral Gal- 
lantry," "The Moral History of Frugality," &.c. A composition in 
praise of Solitude led to a friendly passage of arms with John 
Evelyn, who entered the lists in defence of active life. 

Two famous Diarists are usually reckoned in tliis generation — 
Samuel Pepys (1632-1703) and John Evelyn (1620-1706). Pepys 
was Secretary to the Admiralty in the leiyns of Charles 11. and 
James 11. His Diary, which extends from 1660 to 1669, was 
written in shorthand, and was deciphered by Lord Braybrooke in 
1825. This delightful book of gossip is one of the most interest- 
ing memorials of the domestic life of the time. Evelyn's Diary is 
1 Preface to his translation of More's ' Utopia,' 1684. 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 343 

the work of a more accomplished man (though a less interesting 
and instructive gossip), and extends through a longer period. It 
is, indeed, an autobiogra|ihy extending from 1620 to 1706. From 
1 64 1 lie Wiis ill the habit of setting down with considerable detail 
everything that interested him. Only extracts of so voluminous 
a work have been published. Evelyn is now known chiefly by his 
Diary. In his own day he was called "Sylva" Evelyn, from a 
' Discourse on Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in his 
Majt'sty's Dominions,' published in 1664. He was a man of inde- 
l)endent fortune, and held public employment under Charles and 
James. 

Among the chief Antiquaries of the period were Anthony a 
Wood (1632-1695), the great authority on the antiquities of Oxford 
{Atlicme Ojconienses, 1691), and John Aubrey (16/6-1700), a fellow- 
labourer with Dngdale and Wood, and an authority on popular 
superstitions. Thomas Rynier (1638-1714), comjiiler of Carlyle's 
favourite butt, Rymer's ' Foedera,' also flourished in this period. 
He began life as a tragic poet and dramatic critic. Appointed 
historiographer-royal in 1692, he was emploj'ed to prepare a 
collection of the documents of our public transactions with foreign 
powers. He lived to publish seventeen folio volumes of the series, 
the first appearing in 1703. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 

Sir Roger LTstrange (1616-1704), was the leading newspaper 
writer throughniit the reigns of Charles and James. An eiiter[)ris- 
ing royalist soldier, who had suffered not a little in the cause, he 
was ajtpoiiited licenser or censor of the press in 1663, and at the 
same time received a moiiO])oly of public intelligence in favour of 
his own newspaper, 'The Pulilic IntLlligencer.' He worked hard 
to make his paper a thorough repertory of news, and to extend its 
circulation ; and it was a great discouragement to the growth of 
newspapers when in 1665 his monopoly and his censorshij) were 
taken from him and given to a duller rival in Court favour. The 
disgrace did not exiinguish his loyalty. He continued to support 
the Court with various effusions; and in his ' Observator,' which 
appeared in 16S1, rendered valuable service in defending the ro3'al 
family from the charge of Popery. He excelled in the coarse 
derision and invective — the rough give-and-take of the time ; so 
much so, that he has been, absurdly enough, accused of corrupting 
the English language. He earned the hatreil of lovers of freedom 
by his opposition to the emancipation of the press (which was 
accomplished in 1604), and by his rude exercise of authority while 



344 FROM 1670 TO 17(iO. 

he was himself censor ; but these offences may fairly enough be 
considered the accidents of his time and his position. 

Charles Blount (1654-1693), son of Sir Henry Blount, a Hert- 
fordshire gentleman, author of Travels and various poetical jjieces, 
came more than once into collision with L'Estrange. He rendered 
himself notorious by various deistical publications — among others, 
a history of opinions concerning the soul, and an exposition of his 
own views, under the title of ' Eeligio Laici.' A trick that he 
played on the licenser of books in 1693, led to the abolition of all 
restrictions on the freedom of the press. He committed suicide 
because the sister of his deceased wife, to whom he was passion- 
ately attached, would not marry him without the consent of the 
Church, and that was not to be obtained. 

Walter Charleton (1619-1707), physician to Charles II., and a 
frienl of Hobbes, besides several works on Theology, Natural 
History, Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and Antiquities, wrote 
' A Brief Discourse concerning the Different Wits of Men ' (1675). 
Traces of Hobbes's materialism appear in the work. He ascribes 
differences in cliaracter to differences in the form, size, and quality 
of the brain. His style is rather pedantic, chiefly from a peculiar 
habit of beginning his sentence with tlie predicate adjective 
("Somewhat slow they are " — "Barren they are not," &c.); but 
he writes with vigour, clearness, and wit. 

The witty, sagacious, and versatile George Saville, Marquis of 
Halifax (1630-1695), in the course of his active public life wrote 
some short treatises that show him to liave lieen an easy master of 
the best English of the time. His 'Character of a Trimmer' (a 
humorous defence of moderate courses) is the most famous of these 
productions. 

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), " the father of chemistry, and brother 
to the Earl of Cork," is the author of six quarto volumes of 
scientific observations and religious advices and meditations. He 
Avas one of the most active of the original members of the Royal 
Society. His favourite subjects were chemistry and pneumatics. 
His religious musings are very commonplace : it was to get clear 
of the annoyance of reading them aloud to a lady admirer that 
Swift wrote his famous parody, ' Meditation on a Broomstick.' 
His style is prolix and unmethodical. 

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the most distinguished of English 
mathematicians, inventor of the method of fluxions, and discoverer 
of gravitation and the dispersion of light, need only be mentioned 
here. He was born in Lincolnshire ; like Hobbes, a premature 
and sickly child. His mechanical and mathematical powers were 
soon conspicuous. In 1669 he succeeded Barrow as Lucasian 
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. In recognition of his 
services to science, he was appointed Warden of the Mint in 1695, 



MISCELLA.KEOUS WRITERS. 345 

and Master in 1699. In 1703 he wns elected President of the 
Royal Society, to which he had early been admitted as a member. 
In 1705 he received the honour of knighthood. His best-known 
matl)ematical woik, the ' Priiici|)ia,' or Mathematical Principles of 
Natural Piiilosophy, published in 1687, was written in Latin. In 
addition to his inathematical labours, he turned his ingenuity to 
thorny questions in Scripture, writing ' Observations on the Pro- 
♦phecies;' the ' Chrtmology of Ancient Kingdoms;' and 'An His- 
torical Account of Two NotaMe Corrui)tions of Scripture;' — 
which works were published after his death. His style is plain 
and clear.i 

John Ray (1628-1705), the son of a blacksmith in Essex, was 
the great Engli.sh naturalist of the century, and is regarded as 
one of the founders of botany. A work published in 1691, 'The 
Wisdom of God, manifested in the Works of the Creation,' was 
exceedingly popular until superseded by Paley's 'Natural The- 
ology.' It is written with considerable neatness and spirit. 

1 A vexed question in the life of Newton is whether or not his mind was 
deranged abont tlie year 1693. Sir David Brewster, in his 'Life of Newton,' 
inclines to think that it was but a tenijiorary excitement. In one of his letters 
Newton comijlains of not having slept "an hour a -niglit for a fortiuj;ht together, 
and for five days together not a wink." About tliis time he wrote some inco- 
herent letters, on wluch priucipally u founded the story of his madness. 



CHAPTER YI. 



FEOM 1700 TO 1730. 

Thkotjghout last century this period was venerated as the August 
tan Age in English Literature, the idea being that it had reached 
a crowning pitch of refinement in the arts of composition, and that 
in this respect the Augustan Age was its prototype. The present 
century has not sanctioned the venerable title : our critics will not 
allow that Pope, Swift, and Addison are equal in literary power 
either to their great predecessors of the age of Elizabeth, or to 
their great successors of more recent times ; and on that ground 
refuse them the dignified appellation of Augustan. We may agree 
with the criticism of this century and yet leave the Queen Anne 
celebrities in possession of their coveted title. In the quality of 
careful finish the Queen Anne men were undoubtedly as much 
snpeiior to their predecessors as the Augustan men were to tlieir 
predecessors. In other and more universally impressive qualities 
the Shakspeare period and the Byron period surpass both Queen 
Anne and Augustus— rising, if not "above all Greek," certainly 
"aliove all Roman fame." 

We have here to do only with prose ; and, in that department, 
even the doctrine that the Queen Anne men are superior to their 
predecessors in elaborate finish may be assailed with plausible, if 
not destructive casuistry. Defoe was probably as careless and 
hurried in composition as any author that ever lifted pen in the 
Elizabethan or in any other age. Addison probably committed 
more errors in syntax than Thomas Fuller. Swift finished his 
great compositions with extreme care, but he learne 1 the habit of 
painstaking from his master Sir William Temple. One cannot be 
too careful in making sweeping generalisatit)ns about the char- 
acteristics of a period. Probably all that can be afiirmed with 
safety about Queen Anne prose is that, taken as a whole, the prose 



DANIEL UEFOE. 347 

written by tliis generation contained fewer grammatical errors, and 
was, within certain limits, more varied in expression tlian the prose 
written by tlie preceding generation; and this can prolably be 
affirmed of any generation of writers in the history of our litera- 
ture. We are too apt to attribute the characteristics of a leading 
writer to his age ; because Addison wrote with refined wit and 
elegant simplicity, and had a certain number of imitators, we are 
not to ascribe these qualities to the whole prose literature of the 
reign of C^ucen Anne. 

DANIEL DEFOE, 1661-1731. 

One of the most indefatigable and productive of our prose 
writers,^ pam])hleteer, journalist, writer of Commercial Treatises, 
of Iveligious Treatises, of History, and of Fiction. He is so well 
known as the author of 'Robinson Crusoe,' that many think of 
him in no other capacity; and forget, if they ever hear of, the 
extraordinary number and variety of his works. He is reputed 
author of 250 distinct publications. He was nearly sixty years 
old when he published his first novel ; and before that time he 
had written some hundred and fifty treatises on politics, religion, 
commerce, and what not. 

He is f-ometimes represented as an illiterate London tradesman 
with no education but what he gave himself after leaving schooh 
His own acct)unt is that he was educated by his father, a well-to-do 
butcher in St Giles's, Crijiplegate, with a view to the Dissenter 
ministry, and that he studied for five years with that express ain). 
At whatever time or times lie had picked up his knowltdge, he was 
well informed, and even accomplished : being (by his ow^n acciuint) 
master of five languages — imluding Latin ; widely read in books 
of history and travel ; and acquainted with such science as was 
known in his day. 

His life was stirring and eventful, although comparatively few 
of the incidents are known. His enemies taunted him with begin- 
ning business as a hosier. Tiiis he denied, descrilung him.self as a 
trader. From other authority we know that in course of business 
he visited Portugal, and perhaps other parts of the Continent. 
Whatever his trade may have been, he was too volatile to stick to 
it. An ardent politician, he wTote in 16S3 a political pamphlet 
on the war between the Turks and the Austrians; and in 1685 
rode out (at least so he says) and joined the western rising for 
the Duke of Monmouth. In 1692 he had to compound with his 
creditors. It is a fair conjecture that about this time he began to 

J He is sometimes calleil tlie first, author by profession ; but this is hardly 
roiTfit. Fuller liad little to <k']U'n(l iijinu liut tlie sale of liis works, ami Biiken- 
'leud, NeedLau), and L'E.strange, livid by their literaiy services to a party. 



348 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

cherish, with or without encouragement, hopes of patronage from 
the Minister of State. Some friends offering to settle him as a 
factor at Cadiz, he preferred liis prnspecis at home. Another 
business s])eculation was unsuccessful : he started a pantile work, 
but, accordin;,' to his own account, it lost him ^3000. In 1695 
he was appointed accountant to the cnmniissioiiers for managing 
the duties tm glass ; and held that office till the duty was abolished 
in 1699. In 1 701 his metrical satire 'The True-Born Englishman' 
— an energetic defence of King William, the Dutch, and the l!ev- 
olution — brought hiiu into high favour with the King. In 1702 
an ironical proposal — ' The Shortest Way with the Dissenters ' — 
gave such offence that he was put in the pillory, fined, and im- 
prisoned. During his imprisonment he collected and revised 
twenty-one of the numerous tracts that he had written up to that 
date, and projected a weekly periodical called the ' Review,' the 
prototype of the 'Tatler' and the 'Spectator.' The first number 
of the ' Review' was published on 19th February 1704, and it was 
continued single-handed for eight years. In 1704, through the 
intervention of Harley, he was not only released, but was taken 
into the confidence of Government, and employed on secret ser- 
vices. In 1706-7 he S[)ent four months in Edinburgh as an agent 
for promoting the Union, and his skilful advocacy of the commer- 
cial advantages of the measure is supposed to have exercised no 
small influence on the happy result. Through the changes of a 1- 
ministration during the latter years of Queen Anne, he continued 
in the secret service of Government, all the time writing period- 
icals and pamphlets with his characteristic prolific industry. Nor 
did he lose this prnfitable connection with the ruling powers on 
the accession of George I. and the Whigs. Till a discovery made 
by j\Ir William Lee in 1869, it was supposed that at this date he 
retired from politics, and wrote his more elaborate works : his 
'•^.umily Instructor' (1715), ' Religinus Courtship' (1722), 'Com- 
plete English Tradesman' (1726), ' Political History of the Devil' 
(1726); and his novels — the foundation of his literary fame — 
'Rdbinson Crusoe' (17 19), 'Captain Singleton' (1720), 'Duncan 
Campbell' (1720), 'Moll Flanders ' (172 i), ' Colonel Jack' (1721), 
'Journal of the Plague' (1722), ' Roxana' (1724), ' Memoirs of a 
Cavalier' (undated). But it seems that for several years after 
17 15 he played a very double game; being paid by the AVhig 
statesmen to insinuate himself into the stafi" of an extreme Jacobite 
paper, ' ^Mist's Journal,' and repress its most obnoxious attacks. 
In one of the newly discovered letters he says, " I ventured to 
assure his Lordship the Sting of that mischievous Paper should be 
entirely taken out, though it was granted that the style should 
continue Tory, as it was, that the Party might be amused, and not 
set up another, which would have destroyed the design. And this 



DANIEL DEFOE. 349 

Part T therefore take entirely on myself still." He continued hia 
prodigious literary activity to the very last, dying in April 1731.^ 

In a proclamation offering a reward for his capture in 1703 
(after his "Slioitest Way with the Dissenters"), Defoe is described 
as " a middle-sized spaie man about forty yt-ars old, of a hrown 
complexion, and dark-brown hair, though he wears a wig, havi^ng 
a liook nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a laige mole near his 
mouth." 

His constitution must have been very robust to endure the 
enormous amount of work that he went through in the course of 
his threescoie and ten years of life. Not only was he constantly 
engaged in literary work, but, as a secret agent of the Govern- 
ment, he managed harassing negotiations and braved considerable 
danger — sometimes, as he said in his hyperbolical way, "running 
as much risk as a grenadier on a counterscarp." Of his domestic 
life we know nothing, except that he was married and had six 
children. 

The number, variety, freshness, and popularity of Defoe's works, 
furnish the best possible evidence of the fertility and ingenuity of 
his intellect. For thirty years always ready with something upon 
every political and social question that was passing, he still had 
energy, when this excitement was over, to conquer a new field of 
literature ; and was quite as prolific on subjects of perennial and 
universal interest as he had been on the more exciting topics of 
the hour. The nature no less than the number of his works con- 
veys the impression of amazing versatile energy. Little trouble 
has been taken with the mere literary workmanship ; the author 
of ' Kobinson Crusoe ' can never be classed among the masters of 
carefully elaborated prosa The labour has been exjiended on 
making his narrative minutely circumstantial — his reflection of 
life a jiicture of uni)aralleled fidelity and detail. His novels are 
in the autobiographical form ; and the circumstances of the vari- 
ous situations, the adventures encountered by the supposed nar- 
rator, and the feelings of diflVrent moments, are detailed with such 
minuteness that all his fictions would pass for records of actual 
experience. None of our writers, not even Shakspeare, shows half 
such a knowledge of the circumstances of life among ditierent 
ranks and conditions of men ; none of them has realised with such 
fidelity how so many diflerent persons lived and moved. He dis- 
plays especial subtlety in tracing the gradual growth of an oi)inioa 
or a purpose, fiom its first suggestion to its full develo|)nient : this 
power meets us in all his works, and [lerhaps nowhere is more con- 

1 I have mentioned only the most prominent of Defoe's writings. To mention 
tlieni all is inii)Ossil)le within our limits ; the titles alone would occupy at lea-st 
thirty or lorty of our pages. 



350 FROM 1700 TO 17:50. 

B]tiouous than in his representation of the growth of religious con- 
viction in tlie ' Family Instructor.' 

Supple and versatile of intellect, he was not distingnislied for 
either intensity or delicacy of feeling. He seems to have been a- 
vain, impnlsive, audaciously boastful sort of man. His contro- 
versial works are brimful of hai)py egotism ; he exults in his 
ingenuity and clearness of vision, and bods over in irinical mock- 
ery of his duller opponents. It is a tiibute to his powers of ima- 
gination, but few people will consider .it a comi)liment to his 
honesty, to say that we can believe hardly a word that he tells us 
about himself. Tlie stories that he gives about his youthful 
enthusiasm in joining the Duke of Monmouth, and about the 
unheard-of persecutions that he suffered in later life, are probably 
no less fictitious than the adventures of Iiobin.son Crusoe. 

The characteristics of his intellect come out strongly in liis 
active-life. If the precepts in the 'Complete English Tradesman' 
were drawn from his own practice, he must have been a most 
adroit man of business. His insinuating address was fully appre- 
ciated by those that employed him on secret affairs of state. In 
dealing with men, his fertile ingenuity and profound observation 
left him never at a loss. He would seem to have been a most 
consummate dissembler; his easy success in jj'aying the hypocrite 
gave him the fullest confidence, and his daring effrontery well 
entitled him to Pope's epithet — ^^ ^tnnlxtslwd Defoe." lie was one 
of the most au^laciously shifty and supple of men. 

It is but just to his fair fame to add tliat his hyjwcrisy was not 
turned to malevolent objects : if he was nnt persecuted so much as 
he represents, he is not accused of persecuting others. He was 
probably too magnanimous for personal grudges. What is more, 
no discoveries that have yet been made implicate him in transac- 
tions detrimental to the public good. 

Our author, as we have seen, wrote something like 150 treatises 
on passing questions between 1688 and 17 15; an exhaustive 
account of his opinions would take us over the entire ])olitical, 
social, and conmiercial history of that period. A few of the more 
notable of his views may be singled out. He was a strong sup- 
porter of the Revolution; his 'Tiue-Horn Englishman' was a 
reply to a personal attack on the "foreigner" ruler and his Dutch 
favourites. He strongly opposed the war with France ; we shall 
quote from the ' Con.solidator,' of date 1705, a satirical passage 
that might have been the basis of Swift's famous ' Conduct of the 
Allies' in 1711,1 By birth a Dissenter, he frequently made the 
JJif/li^Jiiers, as the High Churchmen were called, the objects of his 
ridicule ; one of these attacks, we have seen, landed him in the 

1 See p. 367. 



DANIEL DEl^-OE. 351 

pilliiry and in Newgate. His most considerable political achieve- 
ment was his share in effecting the union between England and 
Scotland ; his principal means of i)ersuasion would seem to have 
been the a 1 vantages to Scottish traders. 

His active mind was fertile in practical projects. In 1697 he 
published an ' Essay on Projects.' "He wrote," says Mr George 
Chalmers, " many sheets about the coin ; he proposed a register 
for seamen, long before the Act of Parliament was thimght of ; he 
jirojectt-'d county banks, and factories for goods ; he mentioned a 
proposal for a commission of inquiries into bankrupts' estates ; he 
contrived a peiusion office for the relief of the poor." One of the 
j)rojects in his 'Essay' was a society on the model of the French 
Academy — "for encouraging polite learning, for refining the Eng- 
lish language, and for preventing barbarisms of manners." 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — A good many of Defoe's phrases are old-fashioned, 
and have long since dropped out of current English. We should 
not be safe to use an expression upon his authority. He is an 
excellent representative of the colloquial style of the time ; but 
colloquial phrases have their day. Owing to his frequent use of 
homely idioms, his writings are a very rewarding study to veibal 
reformers, who desire to weed the language of slip-shod idioms 
that have indolently been allowed to establisli themselves, and who 
are anxious to back their proposed reforms with the practice of 
elder writers. 

As we should expect in an author writing upon such a variety 
of topics, liis command of English is prodigious. If one may 
judue from a general im])ression of variety, no writer comes nearer 
to the Shaks|iearian profusion of language. His sympathies were 
so catholic that it is difficult to find out in what region he was 
deficient. He is seldom declamatory or pathetic, but when he is, 
the words seem to flow in the choicest abundance. The rich vein 
in his vocabulary is easier to discover. From his wide practice as 
a controversialist, he is a great master of the language of sarcasm 
and abuse ; even Swift's range is probably not more extensive, as 
his powers of ridicule were less versatile. 

He was too popular a writer to be eccentric in his general 
language ; j'et sometimes in the extravagance of high spirits he 
whimsically coins words that are not unlike some of the eccentri- 
cities of Carlyle. The following is an example : — 

"The yet further extravafcances wliioh naturally attend the mischief of 
wit, are lieaui^in, doginaticiilily, wliinisitieation, inipiulensity, and various 
kinds of fopperosities (according to Mr Boyle), which, issuiug out of the 



352 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

brain, descend into all the faculties, aud branch themselvea by infinite 
variety into all the actions of life." 

Sentences ami ParaarnphK. — In tliis mechanical part of compo- 
sition our author is singularly negligent, especially in his hurried 
political tracts. Had he been, like Temple, a careful builder of 
sentences — studious of the arts of arrangement — he could not have 
produced one-tenth of what ho wrote. His ungrammatical laxity 
would not lie allowed in any modern writer. 

He is so careless that it would answer no purpose to exemplify 
his errors, and so irregular that it would not be easy to discover 
peculiarities of structure. 

His only merit lies in his being consecutive. Whatever be the 
distribution of the matter into sentences and }:)aragi aphs, he is 
desirous that the connection be clearly apparent, and is very ex- 
plicit in his phrases of reference. 

Figures of Speech — Similitudes. — Illustrative force is the most 
remarkable thing in Defoe's similitudes. In conjuuftion with the 
general spirit and vigour of his language, their etiect is elcctrify- 
intj. Agreeably to the wonderful discursiveness of his intellect, 
they are taken from all sources, not forcibly hunted out for embel- 
lishnient, but used for illustration when they present themselves. 
As suited a vigorous popular style, his preference was for the 
homely, and even the coarse. His allusions are sometimes learned, 
but always easily understood from the homeliness of the expression. 

We may quote a few examples : — 

" Drydeu might have been told his fate that, having his extraordinarii 
genius slung and pitched upon a swivel, it would certainly turn roumi ns fa>t 
as the times, and instruct him how to write elegies to Oliver Cromwell and 
King Charles the Second with all the coherence imaginahle ; how to write 
' Religio Laici ' and the 'Hind nnd Panther, ' and yet be the same man, 
every day to change his principle, change his religion, change his coat, 
change his master, and yet never change his nature." 

He describes, in the following metaphorical terms, the w(mderful 
psychological revelations of the Chinese philosopher, Mira-cho-cho- 
lasmo : — 

"There you have that part of the head turned inside outwanl, in which 
nature has jilaceii the materials of reflecting ; and, like a tjlass beehive, rep- 
resents to yon all the several cells in which are lodged tilings past, even 
back to infancy and concejition. There you have the repository, with nil 
its cells, clas.^ioally, annually, numeiically, and alphabetii ally disposed. 
There you may see how, when the perplexed animal, on the loss of a 
thi'Ught or a word, scrati-hes his poll, every attack of his invading fingers 
knocks at nature's duor, alarms all the register-kee| ers, and away tfiey run, 
inilock all the classes, search diligently for what he calls for, and iininedi- 
atelv deliver it up to the hrani ; if it cannot he found, they entreat a little 
]>atien<'e, till they step into ihe revohary, where they run ovtr little cata- 
lo'^'ues of the minutest pas-ages of lite, and so, in time, nevyr fail to baud 
on the thing ; if not just wlien he calls lor it, yet at some other time." 



DANIEL DEFOE. 353 

As an example of Ins nmrt' aiiibitious illustrations, take Lis com- 
parison between the doctrine of passive obedience and the Coper- 
nican system : — 

" I take the doctrines of passive obedipiice, &p., amoiii; tlie statesmen, to 
be like ilie Ci)]ieriiiciin sy.stein of the oaith's motidii among jiiul().s(ij)hers, 
whicli, thoUijh it be contrary to all aiu ient knowieiige, and not CHj),ible of 
deiiionstratioii, yet is adliered to in <;eneral, becau>e by this they can better 
solve and give a more rational account ot seveial dark phenomena iu nature 
than they could before. I 

"Thus our modern statesmen approve of this scheme of government; not 
that it admits of any r:itional <ieleiice, niucdi less of demonstration, but 
because by this method they can the better expLun, as well as ciel'eud, all 
coercion iu cases invasive of natural right than they could before." 

Confrast. — Altliough our author is not a studious cidtivator of 
point or epigram, yet these arts form one among his many instru- 
ments <if ridicule. We shidl produce two examples. The first is 
an ai'count of some of the tldngs that he saw when he visiied 
the moon, through a won>;erful glass that penetrated beneath all 
disguises : — 

" Here we saw the state of the wnr among nations ; here was the French 
giving sliani thanks for victories the}' never got, and somebody else address- 
ing and congratulating the sublime gl'My of running awny; lit-re was Te 
Deum for sham victories by hind, and thei-e was tha' k^givlng for ilitto by 
sea ; here we mi;^ht see two aimies tight, both run away, ami both come and 
thank God for nothing. Here we saw :i plan of a late war like tliat in Ire- 
land; there was all the officers cursii g a Dutcli giiieral, because the damned 
rogue would fight and spoil a good war, that, with decent management and 
good husbandry, ndglit liave breii eked out this twenty years; there were 
■whole armies luinting two cows to one Irishman, and driving otf black cattle 
declar< d the noble end of the war. Here we saw a country lull of stone 
walls and strong towns, where, t^veiy campaign, the trade of war was earned 
on by the soldieis with the same intriguing as it was carried on in the couq- 
cil cliainhers ; there were millions of contributions raised, and vast sums 
collected, but no taxes lessened ; whole plate-tleets surprised, tait no treasure 
found ; vast sums lost liy enemies, and yet never found by friends ; shi|)8 
loailed with volaiile silver, that came away full and got liome empty ; whole 
voyages made to beat nobody, and plunder every bo<ly; two millions robliei 
from the honest nierchants, and not a gioat saved for the honest subjects. 
There we saw captains listing men with the Government's money, and let- 
ting them go again for their own ; ships Ktted out at the rate of two milliona 
a-year, to tight but once in three years, and then ruu away lor want of 
powder and shot." 

The next seems to be an extravagant parody of the epigram : — 

"He told me, as the inhabitants were the most numerous, so they were 
the strangest ]ieo]ile that lived; bijili' their natures, tempers, qualities, 
actions, and way of living, was made up of innunieraMe contradiitions ; that 
they were the wisest tools and the fooli^hest wise nien iu tljc woild ; the 
weakest, strongest, richest, jioorest, most generous, co\ etous, bold, cowardly, 
false, faithful, sober, dissolute, surly, civil, slothful, diligent, peaceable, 
quarrelling, loyal, seditious nation that ever was known." 

Z 



354 FUOM 1700 TC 1730. 



QUALITIES OF RTYLB. 

Simplicity. — The use of lioniely language is one of the most 
reiTiarkal)Ie features in Defoe's style. It is one of the secrets of 
the continued popularity of ' Robinson Crusoe.' 

Two things may be specially exem])lified under this head. One 
is, the coarse plainness of lani^nage tbit he sometimes ado[)ted for 
purposes of ridicule; and the otiier, liis orderly colloquial exposi- 
tion of su^)jects that might have been treated in a more pretentious 
and abstru.Ne style. 

As an exain[)le of a very undignified tone of banter, take the 
beginning of his 'Reasons agiinst the Succession of the House 
of Hannver,' another ironical piece that waa taken for earnest, and 
led to'his temporary imprisonment : — 

"What strife is here among you all ? And what a nnise ahont who shall 
or sliall not be king, the Loni IciTmvs when ? Is it not a strange tiling we 
C!Uini>t be quiet with tlie (jueen we iiuve, but we must all tall into confu.sion 
aiui ('(iinliustious ahout who sliall come after? Why, ]uay folks, how ohl is 
the queen, and when is siie to die? that here is tliis pother made al)out it. 
I have heard wise people say the queen is not lifty years old, that she has 
no distemper but the gout, that that is a life-long disease, which generally 
holds people out twenty, or thirty, or forty years ; and let it go liow it will, 
the queen may well enougii linger out twenty or thirty years, and not be a 
huge old wife neitlier. Now. what say the jieople? must we tiiink of living 
twenty or thirty years in this wrangling condition we are now in ? This 
would be a torment worse th in some of the Egyptian plagues, and would be 
intolerable to l)ear, though for fewer years than that. The animosiiies of 
tliis natmu, should they go on, as it seems they go on now, would by time 
become to smdi a height, that all charity, society, ami mutual agreement 
among us, will be destroyed. Christians shall we lie called ? No; nothing 
of the people called Christians will be to be found among us. Nothing of 
Christianity, viz., charity, will be found among us ! The name Christian 
may be assumed, liut it will he all hyjiocrisy and delusion ; the being of 
Christianity must be lost in tlie fog, and snmke, and stink, and noise, and 
rage, and cruelty, of our quarrel about a king. Is tliis rational? Is it 
a'-'reeable to the true interests of the nation ? What must become of trade, 
of religion, of society, of relation, of families, of jieople? Why, hark ye, 
you (oik tiiat call yourselves rational, and talk of hiving souls, i.-> tliis a 
token of your having sucli tilings about you, or of your tliiuking rationally? 
if you have, pray what is it likely will become of you all? Why, the strife 
is gotten into your kitchens, your parlours, yfiur shops, your coun'.ing- 
liou-es, nay, into your very beds. You genth^hilks, if you jdea.se to li>teD 
to your cook-maids and footmen in your kitctiens, you shall hear them 
scohling, and swearing, and scratching, and fighting amont; themselves; 
and when you tiiink the noise is about the beef and the jnulding, the disii- 
water, or the kitchen-stuff, alas, you are mistaken ! the feud is about tlie 
niore mighty all'airs of tiie goveriiinent, and wiio is for the I'rotestant succes- 
sion, ami who for the Pretender. Here the poor despicable scullions learn 
to cry, liigii Church, No Dutcli Kings, No Hanover, that tiiey may do it 
dexterously when they come into tlie next mob. Here ilieir an ta ironists of 
the diippingpan [uactise tlie otlier side clamour, No Fiemda Peace, No 
Pretender, No Popery. The thing is the very same up,"&c. 



DANIEL DEFOE, 355 

Examples of his simple expositions may be fdund in any page 
of the ' Complete Tradoiiman.' Tlie following is a very fair speci- 
men : — 

"Another trarling license is that of appointing and promising payments 
of money, wliicli men in biisinehS ;ne oftentimes lorced to niiike. and loiced 
to breiik, without any scniple ; n;iy, and witiiout any reiuoaeh upon tlieir 
integrity. Let us .state tids case as clfarl}' as we can, ami so« how it stands 
as to tlie morality of it, lor tluit is the point in ddiate. 

"The credit usually given by one tradi'sinan to anotlier, as pnrtiinilaily 
by the merchant to the \vhole>ale man, and by the wholesalc-nian to tiie re- 
tailer, is such, that, witliout tying tlie buyer up to a )iarticular day of jiay- 
mcnt, they go on buying and selling, and tlie buyer pays nnmey U|ioa 
account, as his convenience admits, and as the seller is content to take it. 
This occasions the merchant or the wholesale-man to go aliout, as they 
call it, a-dunning among their dealers, and whicii is generally the work of 
every Saturday. When the merchant comes to his customer the wholesale- 
man, or wareiiouse-keeper, (or money, he tells liini, ' I liave no money, sir ; 
I cannot pay you now; if you call next week, I will pay you.' Next week 
conies, and tiie merchant calls again ; but it is the same tiling, only the 
■warehouseman adds, ' Well, I will pay you next week, irWioiit fail.' When 
the week conies, he tells him lie has met with great disappoiiuments, and 
he knows not what to do, but desires liis patience another week: and when 
the other week conies, ]ierhaps he pays liiiu, and so tiiey go on. 

" Now, wiiat is to be said for this ? In the fir.st place, let us look hack to 
the O'l-asion. This wai'eliouse-keeper, or wliolesale-maTi, sells tlie goods 
which he buys of the merchant — I say he sells tlieni to the letailers, and it 
is for that reason I ]>laee it fiivt there. Now, as tliey buy in smaller (|uan- 
tities than he did of the mercliant, so he lieals with more of tliem in nninber, 
and he goes about among tliem the same Saturday, to get in money that he 
may pay liis merchant, and he receives his bag full of promises, too, e\ ery- 
■where instead of money, and is put oil' from week to \\ eek, perhaps by fifty 
shojikeepers in a day; and their serving him thus obliges him to do the 
same to the merchant. 

"Again, come to the merchant. Except some whose circumstances are 
above it, tiiey aie by this veiy usage obliged to put off the Black wellhall 
factor, or the packer, or the clothier, or wlioever they deal with, in propor- 
tion ; and thus promises go round for payment, and those promises are kept 
or I'l'oken as money cinnes in, or as disaiiiiointments happen: and all this 
wliile there is no breach of honesty, or parole; no lying, or supposition of 
it, among the tradesmen, either on one side or other. 

" But let us come, I say, to the morality of it. To break a solemn pro- 
nii.se is a kind of ju-evaiication ; that is certain, there is no coming olf of it ; 
and I niiuht enlarge here ujion the first fault, namely of making the pro- 
mise, wliieh, say the strict oigeciors, they should not do. But tlie trades- 
man's answer is this: all those |irondses onulit to betaken as they are made 
— namely, witli a contiiig<'nt dependence upon the circumstances of trade, 
such as pioiiii-es made them by others who owe them money, or the sn|)posi- 
tioii of a Week's trade bringing in money by retail, as u.sual, i)oth of which 
arc liable to fail or at least to fall short ; and this tlie ]ier>on who calls for 
the money knows, and tal^es the in-oinise with tliose attending ca^llalties; 
which if they fail, he knows the shopkeeper or whoever he is, must fail him 
too." 

Clearness. — The last-quoted passage is a specimen of our author's 



356 FROM 17t)0 TO 1730. 

most distinct style of expression. When, as in tlie above case, he 
is put upon his mettle to be perspiiuous, lie observes a certain 
precision of method, giving express notice when he passes from 
one consideration to anotlier: " In the first place, let us lonk back 
to the occasion ;" " Again, come to the merchant;" " But let us 
come, I say, to the morality of it." But he writes too hurriedly 
to lie [irecise in exjuession. When we stuly for a little what he 
writes, we can see that he has a clear and viLronms mind, iind is 
seldom oppressed by confusion of thought. V>ut his exjiression is 
often imperfect. He hurries on, and is content to leave it incom- 
plete. The above phrases of transition, for examjjle, are incom- 
plete — the first particularly. We see what they mean after we 
have read the j)aragraph they introduce, but not before. 

Strenr/fh.— Det'<ie's general style may be described as nervous. 
It has the stength arising from variety, copiousness, and vigorous 
fitness of plain words and metaphors, with an occasional "t-oig" 
of antitliesis. 

He wants tlie power of sonorous declamation ; as may be seen in 
the coarse vigour of his familiar expostulation with the people of 
England concerning their political dissensions. In his 'Seasunable 
Warning and Caution,' touching the same theme, he attempts a 
loftier ilight, but mars the eft'ect by occasional expressions in his 
more usual tone of familiarity. Thus — 

" Why, how now, England ! what aili'St thee now ? Wliat evil spirit 
now i.osscssetli tliee ? O tlioii nation fanioiis lor espousing reli^'ion, and 
defeiiilincr liberty; t-ininent in all ajr<'s lor jniUin,!,' down tyrants, and allier- 
inj< steadily to tlif luncluineiitals of thy own constitntion: tiiat has not only 
secmeil tliy own rii,dits, and handt-<i theiu down uninipared to every suc- 
ci^eding aj(e, but has been the sanctuary of other oppressed nations ; the 
stroll},' pr^ti'dtor of injured subjects against the lawless invasion of oppress-- 
ing tyrants. 

"To thee the oppressed Protestants of France owed, for some ages ago, 
the eonifon ot biung poweilully su])i)'ated, while their own kinjr, wheedled 
by the lustre of a cruwii, became a[)ostate, antl laid the foundation of their 
ruin among tliemselvcs ; in tht-e iheir posterity find a retuge, and flourish 
in thy wealth and trade, wlieu religion and liberty find no more phice iu 
their own country. 

" To thee the distressed Belgii owe the powerful assistance by which they 
took up arms in defence of liberty and religion against Spanish cruelty, the 
peilidious tyranny ot their kin<js, and the ra'^e of the bloody Duke d'Alva. 

"... Hut what has all this been for? And to what intent and 
purpose was all this zeal, if you wdl sink under the ruin of the very fabric 
ye have pnlh-d down ? If you will give up tlie cause after ye liave gained the 
advantage, ami yield yoursrlve< up alter you have been delivered; to wliat 
jmrpose then has all this been done ? Wliy all this ni"iiey expended? Why 
all this blooil spilt ? To what end is France saiil to be reduced, and peace 
now concluded, if tlie same I'opery, the same tyranny, the same arbitrary 
methods of government shall be re<eived among you again ? Sure your pos- 
terity will stand amazed to consider how lavish this age has been of their 
money and their blood, and to how little puip.;ac; since no age since the 



DANIEL DEFOE. 357 

creation of the world cnn show us a tiirip whenever any nation spent so 
miicli blood and treasuie to end just where they begun : as, it the arts of 
our enemies prevail, we are like to do." 

His homely nervous style is well suited to the relation of lively 
horrors, or of exciting commotions, such as riots and mutinies. In 
recording the alarms caused by the fear of infection during the 
Great Plague of 1665, he is incomparably graphic and impressive. 
He produces his effects not by ponderous epithets, or imjjressive 
reflections, but by the accumulation of striking details in homely 
language. As an example : — 

"Another infected person carae and knocked at the door of a citizen's 
house, where they knew him very well ; the servant let him in, and bcin» 
told the master of the house was above, he ran up, and came into the ro<im 
to them as the whole family were at supper. They began to rise up a little 
surprised, not knowing what the matter was; but he b;ide them sit still, he 

only came to take his leave of them. They asked him, 'Why, Mr , 

where are you going?' 'Going,' says he, 'I have got the sickness, and 
shall die to-morrow night.' It is easy to believe, though not to describe, 
the coiisternation they were all in ; tlje women and the man's daughters, 
which were but little giils, were frightened .nlmost to death, and g<>t up, all 
running out, one at one door and one at another, some down-stairs and some 
up-stairs, and getting together as well as they could, locked themselves into 
their chambers, and screamed out at the window for help, as if they had 
been friglited out of their wits. The master, more composed than they, 
thoiigh both frighted and provoked, was going to lay luinds on him and 
thmw him down-staiis, beirig in a passion ; but then considering a little the 
condition of the man, and the danger of touching him, horror seized his 
mind, and he stood like one astonished. The poor distem|ered man, all 
this while, being as well diseased in his brain as in Ids body, stood still like 
one amazed ; at length he turns round, ' Ay ! ' says he, with all the seeming 
calmness imaginable, 'is it so with you all? Are j'ou all disturbed at me? 
Why, then, I'll e'en go home and die there.' And so he goes immediately 
down-stairs. The servant that had let him in goes dowu alter him with a 
candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door, so he stood on the 
etiiirs to see what he would do ; the man went and opened the door, and 
went out and flung the door after him." 

The Lndicrot/s. — The extravagance of Defoe's sense of the ludi- 
crous is in proportion to the marvellous energy of the man. He 
deals in the same kind of undisguised banter as Macaulay ; only 
he is more exuberant, stands less upon his dignity, hits fearlessly 
at greater antagonists, and altogether has a more magnanimous 
air. At the risk of being formal, we may compare him with the 
other three great prose wits in this age of wits, Addison, Steele, 
and Swift. He is more openly derisive and less bitter than Addi- 
son, having no mastery of the polite sneer: he is not a loving 
humorist like Steele, but sarcastically and derisively humorous; 
and he is more magnanimous and less personal than Swift, dealing 
w ith public not with jjrivate conduct, and carrying into the war- 
fare a sjiirit less savagely ferocious. 



358 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

Passages already quoted illustrate the extravagance of liis hu- 
mour, as it appears in epigrammatic paradox, and in the application 
of very homely languai^e to atlairs usually treated with stiff dignity. 
His ' Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the 
Moon,' is, as we should expect from the title, full of extravagant 
fun — so extravagant that the satire is converted into humour. In 
the passage quoted concerning the Irish and French wars (p. 353), 
the satire is predominant; liut very often he loses sight of his 
polemical purpose, and gives a loose rein to his powers of ludicrous 
invention. The metaphorical description of the discoveries of the 
great psychologist (p. 352) is a fair example. Here is another : — 

" If these labours of mine shall prove successful, I may, in my next journey 
that way, take an abstract of their most admirable tracts in navigation, and 
the mysteries of Chinese matliematics ; which outilo all modern invention 
at th;it rate, tliat it is inconceivable ; in this elaborate work I must run 
through the 365 volumes of Augro-maelu-lamiuaro-zi, the most ancient 
mathematician in all China ; from thence 1 shall give a description of a 
fleet of ships of a hundred thousand sail, built at the expense of the emjjeror 
Tangro the XVih. ; who, having notice of the general deluge, prepared these 
vessels, to every citv and town in his dominions one, and in hulk projior- 
tioned to the number of its inliabitants ; into which vessel all the people, 
with such inovabli'S as they thought fit to save, and with a hundred and 
twenty <iays' provisions, were received at the time of tiie Hood ; and the 
rest of their goods being jiut into great vessels made of China v;are, and fast 
luted down on the toji, were preserved unhurt by the water: these shij^s 
they furnished with six hundrt-d fathom of chain instead of (;abK's, whicu 
being fastened l>y won<lerful arts to the eaith, every vessel rid out the 
deluge just at the town's end ; so that when the waleis abated, the people 
had noihing to do but to open the doors made in the shii)-sides and come 
out, repair their houses, ojien the great China pots their goods were in, and 
so jiut themselves in statu quo." 

One of the most striking features in our author's wit is his 
power of irony. Of this power he received very disagreeable 
j)roof : his ironical proposal, ' The Shortest Way with the Dissent- 
ers,' was praised by the extreme High fliers as an admirable idea, 
and the mocking author imprisoned when they discovered to their 
fury how they had been cheated ; and eleven years later, his iron- 
ical ' Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover' was 
misinterpreted by the Government, and much to his surprise, he 
was incarcerated as a genuine Jacobite. We have quoted the 
opening of the latter piece. The following is a portion of the 
mock declamation of his ' Shortest Way ' : — 

" It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the purest and 
most flourishing church in the woild has been eclipsed, bulleted, and dis- 
tinbed, by a sort of men who God in His providence has suffered to insult 
over iier, and bring her down ; these have been the days of her humiliation 
and tiil)ulation. She was born with an invincible ]iatience, the re]iroach of 
the wicked, and God has at la-^t heard her prayers, and delivered her from 
the opjiression of the stranger. 



DANIEL DEFOE. 350 

" And now tliey find their dny is over, their power gone, and the throne 
of this iintion possessed by a rovMl, English, true, and ever-constant member 
of, iuid friend to the Cinirch of Kngland. Now that they find they are in 
danger of the Church of England's just reseiitnit-nts ; now tlx-y cry out 
]>eace, union, forbearance, and chaiity, as if tlie Church had not too long 
liarlioured lier enemies under her wing, and nonrislicd the viperous brood, 
till they hiss ami fly in the face of the mother that cherished them. 

"No, gentlemen, tlie time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over; 
you should have practised peace and moderation, and charity, if you 
expecti (I any yourselves. 

" We have luaid more of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have 
been hulled and bullied with your Act of Toleration ; you have told us that 
you are the Church established by law, as well as others ; have set up your 
canting synagogues at our cliurch-doors, and the ( liureh and members have 
been loaded wiili reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjuiatioiis, and what 
not ; where has been the meicy, the forbearance, the cliaiity, you have 
shown to tender consciences ol the Church of England, that could not take 
oaths as fast as you made them ? that having sworn allegiance to their lawful 
and rightful king, could not dispense with that oath, their king being still 
alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch Government? These 
have been turned out of their livings, and they and their fmiilics left to 
starve ; tiieir estates double taxed, to cairy on a war they had no hand in, 
and you got nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you 
have forced to com]ily, against their cotisciences, with your new sophistical 
polities, who, like new converts in Fiance, sin because they can't starve ? 
And now the tables are turned upon you, you must not be persecuted, 'tis 
not a Christian spirit ! 

" Your manageuient of your Dutch monarch, whom j'oii reduced to a mere 

king ot cl s, is enough to give any lutuie jirinces such an idea of your 

j>rinciples, as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your cluti lies ; 
and, God be thanked, the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will 
have a care of you. " 

KINDS OP COMPOSITION. 

Defoe, as is testified by every page of his writings, excelled in 
the graphic presentation both of concrete things and of states of 
mind. He did not attempt comprehensive formal delineations <if 
complicated scenes, and so dues not exhibit JJescriptive method in 
its most difficult application ; yet lie must be allowed to be one of 
our greatest masters of single descriptive touches. 

One variety of descriptive me: hod, indeed, he may be said to 
have employed, and that with the highest success — the piesenta- 
tion of scenes from the traveller's point of view. He puts before 
us the various features of a country as they turn up in his narra- 
tive. There is no full description of Robinson Crusoe's island in 
any one place, but particular is added to jiarticular as they oc- 
curred to Robinson himself, and before the close of the narrative 
we know the island from shore to shore. He acts upon the same 
plan in all his narratives. One of his narratives in particular, his 
' Voyage Round the World,' is framed expressly for descriptive 
purposes ; in that work his main object is to present a systematic 



360 FllOM I TOO TO 1730. 

body of his multifarious knowledge concerning foreign countries, 
foreign trade, and foreign adventures, by sea and by land. 

It is worthy of remark that he observes the cardinal rule of 
description, the inaugural presentation of a comprehensive view. 
Ife fills in the picture by degrees, but he begins by drawing the 
general outline. One of the first things that Robinson Crusoe 
docs is to go to the top of a hill and view the country : — 

"After I hnd with p^reat Libour ami difficulty got to tlie top, I saw my 
fiite, to my great atlli' tion, viz., that I wms in an island environed every 
way with liic sea, no land to he seen excejit some roeks, which lay a great 
way oir, ami two small islands, h'ss than this, which l:iy about tline leagues 
to the w6st. I found also tliat the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw 
good reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, how- 
ever, 1 saw none." 

Another thing worth observing in his descriptions is that he 
has a Herodotean knack of giving numerical measuies of extent, 
and of indicating the lie of a country by a reference to the points 
of the compass. This is one of his arts for giving an air of reality 
to his narratives. 

The Narrative art of so successful a story-teller as Defoe de- 
serves careful study. He chooses the simplest form of narration, 
the record by an individual of incidents that have happened within 
his personal knowledge. His narratives are all autobiograjjliicaL 
In his ' Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and others of his woik.s, he mingles 
general accounts of public transactions that the Cavalier took part 
in with the narrative of personal adventures ; but it is in the 
narrative of personal adventures that the interest of the work 
consists. 

The question arises, Does he show any art beyond the accumu- 
lation of interesting incidents : dt)es he show skill in the order of 
presenting them ? Apart from the question of interest, — which, 
it is su[)erfluous to say, Defoe sustains with unique power, — liis 
narrative is eminently persjiicuitus. He has, to be sure, no com- 
plicated difliculties to overcome, but he observes all tlie conditions 
of perspicuity for the sim{)le forms of narrative that he professes: 
when he shifts the scene, he gives the reader distinct intimation of 
the change ; when new agents are intro luced, their appearance is 
expiessly announced ; and he does not depart from the order of 
events without an apology and ample explanation. And as he is 
tolerably exact in his measurement of space, so he is tolerably 
exact in his measurement of time : the assigning of definite dates 
also helps to keep u]) the air of reality. We have mentioned these 
various items of lucidity without qualification : it should be added, 
that thoULfh Defoe observes these conditions in the main, his nar 



JONATHAN SWIFi. 3G1 

ratives were for the most part written hurriedly, and the close 
reader finds an occasional confusion. 

For pojmlar Exposition, apart from his general felicity of lan- 
guage, Defoe had two strong cards: a multifarious, and, compara- 
tively speaking, inexhaustible command of exanii)les and com- 
parisons. His 'C'im[ilete English Tradesman' is a manual of 
advice that still finds readers. 



JONATHAN SWIFT, 1667-1745. 

The author of 'Gulliver's Travels,' the eccentric Dean of St 
Patrick's in Ireland, has been all but universally acknowledged as 
the most vigorous and gianimatical writer uf English anterior to 
Johnson, 

He was born in Dublin, the posthumous son of Jonathan Swift, 
a native of Yorkshire, said to be second cousin to the poet Diy- 
den ; and was educated by the charity of an uncle at the school of 
Kilkenny, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He entered the world, 
at the age of twenty-one, as private secretary to Sir William 
Temple, who had married a relative of his mother. This post he 
held, with a brief interval, for eleven years, remaining in the Moor 
Park family till the death of Sir William in 1699. Again thrown 
on his own resources, he was for a short tune chaplain in the 
family of Lord Berkeley, and from him obtained in 1700 the 
livings of Laracor and l\athbeggin in the dioeese of Meath. He 
rose to no hiiiher preferment till made Dean of St Patrick's by his 
Tory friends in 17 13. 

Like other literar}'^ men of the time, he took an interest in pol- 
itics, and wiote with a {>olitical aim. His first publication, ' Dis- 
sensions in Athens and Rome,' a[ipeared in 1701, when the author 
I was thirty-four years of age: it relates the evil consequences of 
dissensions between Nol)les and Connuons in the ancient states, 
and points a moral against the quarrelsome behaviour of the Eng- 
lish Commons. The anonymous 'Tale of a Tub,' — a satire on 
religious dissensions and the self - sufficiency of the different 
Churelies, filled out with numerous sa'irical digressions on vari- 
ous subjeets,^ — was written about 1696, and first published in 
1704. Along with the 'Tale of a Tub' appeared 'The Battle of 
the Books' — a burlesque on Teinple's op[!onents in the Ancient 
versus Modern controve sy. In 1708 he took a leading place 
among the wits by his ridicule of John Partridge, the Philomath 
or Asti'ologer. This performance made the name of Isaac Bicker- 
stafF one of the most popular in town, for which reason it was 
assumed by Steele when lie began the 'Tatler.' From 17 10 to 
1 7 14, the four last years of Queen Anne's reign, he was the chief 



302 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

literary support of the Tory Administration, writing tlie 'Conduct 
of the Allies,' the 'Letter to the Octolier Club,' the 'Examiner,' 
and other telling compositions. His 'Journal to Stella' was writ- 
ten (luring his residence in London at this ])(riod. When George 
came to the throne, anil the power of government passed to the 
Whigs, he retired to his Irish deanery.' Ten years thereafter he 
made a great sensation in the political world, and gained unex- 
ampled jiopularity in Ireland, by his ' Drapier's Letters,' written 
against Wood's patent for a copper coinage. The letters raised 
sncli a commotion that the patent had to be revoked. ' (JuUiver's 
Travels' was published in 1726-27, and "was received with such 
avidity that the price of the first edition was raided before the 
second could be male." 

Swift's relations with Stella and Vanessa — Miss Johnson and 
Miss Vanhomrigh — are too complicated to be here entered ui)on 
at leni;th. Stella passed as a daughter of Sir William 'reni[ile'3 
steward, but was believed to be the natural daughter of Sir William 
himself. When Swift went to Ireland he persuaded her to come 
and live near him under the charge of Mrs Dingley, kept up with 
her all the intimacy of a Platonic friendship, and latterly was 
united to her by a private marriage, though the connection was 
for some reason or other never publicly acknowledged. His rela- 
tions with Miss Vanhomrigh were less mysterious, but more trag- 
ical. As her literary tutor, he suiFered or encouraged her to fall 
])assionately in love with him. Warm-hearted and impetuous, she 
made him an offer of marriage; and when he equivocated and 
urged delay, she threw reserve aside, and pursued the unusual 
suit with warm entreaty and argument. She died of a broken 
heart, on discovering the Dean's intimacy with Stella. 

Swift is described by Sir Walter Scott as " in person tall, strong, 
and well made, of a dark complexion, but with ))lue eyes, black 
an 1 bushy eyebrows, nose somewhat M(iuiline, and features which 
remarkably expressed the stern, haiighty, and dauntless turn of 
his mind." . 

It needed considerable constitutional strength to support the 
astonishing force of his character; yet there would seem to have 
been some radical disorder in his system. From our earliest 
records of his behaviour, he was excessively irritable, at times even 
savauely so. He could not endure to accommodate himself to 
people ; he either gloomily held his tongue, or overbore o])position 
with fierce impatience. We can hardly explain this without sup- 
posing some ladical distemper ; it may have been the uneasy 
l)e:;inMiiig3 of the brain disease that afterwards unhinged his 
reason. 

Taken as a whole, his writings leave upon our minds a wonder- 



JONATHAN SWIFT. 363 

ful impression of persistent originality, analogical power, effective 
eloquence, and wit. We feel his originality most vividly when we 
compare his works wi;h the works of writers less powerful or less 
persistently concentrated ; when, for example, we comjtare his 
' Tale of a Tub' with Defoe's ' Shortest Way with Dissenters,' or 
his 'Gulliver's Travels' with Defoe's 'Voyage to the Moon.' 
Dffoe's performances have the originality of first thoughts dashed 
off hastily — oiiginality, as it were, of the first remove. Swift's 
performances appear as the outcome of strong powers working ujt 
to a high ideal ; remodelling first thoughts and still remaining 
unsatisfied ; climbing, stage after stage, to a tran.scendently impos- 
ing altitude above the common level. A man with his quickness 
of thouuht w^ould piobably find some ludicrous parallel upon the 
first endeavour ; but he was not content until he had discovered a 
parallel that should be supremely ludicrous. The surjirising per- 
sistence and power of his efforts ajjpears not less in the quantity 
than in the quality of his analogies. In the ' Tale of a Tub' and 
in ' Gulliver's Travels,' the multitude as well as the aptness of the 
parallels between the imaginary narmtive and the facts allegorised 
are absolutely unrivalled among works of th;it nature, and could 
have been conceived only by the greatest powers at ihe maximum 
of intense concentration. He was famous for quick flashes of 
extempore wit; in an age of brilliant talkers, he held one of the 
highest places. But the requirements for his sustained composi- 
tions embraced something over and above this : ' Gulliver's Tra- 
vels ' needed steady application as well as quickness of analogical 
energy. There were men in the Queen Anne period that held 
their own with Swift in the social interchange of wit, as there 
were men more delicate in criticism and more sagacious in state- 
craft; but he stood alone in the rare combination of subtle wit 
with demoniac perseverance. 

In some of his writings he displays intense feeling ; we read 
hardly a ]iage without encountering some stroke of passion. 
Strong egotism is more or less involved in all his emotional mani- 
festations. He was, as we have said, savagely imjiatient of the 
slightest contradiction. If either a person or an institution jarred 
with his notions of what it ought to be or ought to do, his lage 
was instantaneous and irrepressible.* In his Journal to Stella, 
indeed, he expressed himself with the most passionate fondness. 
But this was not inconsistent with the irritable egotism that else- 
where displayed itself as the ruling passion of his nature. It was, 
indeed, an outcome of the same passion in an allotraj^ic form : in- 
tense affection for an intimate companion is describable as an 

' The gross violations of decency in his writings are referalile to the same 
intense egotism ; he delighted to shock coiiveutioual notious, and to brave con- 
trailictiou or rebuke. 



304 FUO.M 17(0 TO 1730. 

exjtanded egotism. While Swift was in London, Stella was to 
him an aller f;/(>, another self; there were none of the irritations 
of actual com[ianii'n.shi[) to break the flow of his tenderness. 

His conduct both in [)ulilic and in j)rivate was determined by 
im[)erious irrit;ible pride. He was immoderately fond of the ex- 
ercif«e of power, and ungovernably restless under authnrity. He 
must have his own way for the moment, come what would He 
has not been proved guilty of mean selfishness or of malice. On 
the contrary, he showed himself on several occasions public- 
s[)irited and charitable. r<ut l)oth his public sj)irit and his charity 
were to this extent egotistic that he insisted dictatorially upon his 
own schemes lor the good of the party interested. As a clergy- 
man, "iiischarging his duties with punctuality," his ruling pas- 
sion came out in dictatorial schemes for improving the condition 
of his parishioners, and savage contempt for the idleness and over- 
populating fecundity that marred his plans. During his four 
years' importance at Court, he is described as lording it over the 
highest officers of state, treating them with the air of a patron, 
"affecting rather to dictate than advise." In i)rivate company, 
though esteemed the greatest wit of the age, he beh.ived at times 
with the same rude imperiousness. A story is told of his per- 
em|itorily bidding Lady Birlington "sing him a song," and, when 
she refused, threatening to make her sing when he bade her. In 
the rampant moments of tliis towering egotism, he was bl:nd to 
every other interest. When he suspected his patron Lord Berke- 
ley, and Berkeley's secretary, Bnshe, of playing false to him in the 
matter of a clerical presentation, he left their presence in a fuiy, 
crying — "Gol confound you both for a couple of scoundrels!" 
When his but'er, who copied the Diapier Letters, seemed to pre- 
sume upon his knowledge of the terrible secret, he dismissed the 
man with "Do the worst you dare, sir!" — an infuriated braving 
of consequences which it would be hard to parallel. 

Opinions. — Macaulay brands our author as " an apostate politi- 
cian." He coquetted with the Whigs, it is said, and went over to 
the Tories when the Wliig leaders showed an imperfect respect for 
his powers. It is not pretended that he ever wrote for the Whigs, 
or ever received favours from them. In his choice of a party he 
probably was determined not a little by personal feelings and his 
natural love of opposition. 

His religious sincerity has been questioned. The presumptions 
are drawn solely from the satirical and gross tone of his writings. 
Macaulay terms him "a ribald priest." Against the presumptions 
thus derived is the fact tliat he is often sarcastic with disbelievers 
in Christianity. His 'Tale of a Tul)' supports the Chuich of 
England against Papist and Presbyterian- 



JOxNATIIAN SWIFT. 305 

We may quote one or two of his " Thoughts on various sub- 
jects " : — 

" We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make 
us love, one another." 

"When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wiiolly on the good 
side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on 
the bad side." 

" The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping olT our desires, is 
like cutting otf our feet when we want shoes." 

"The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, 
prejudices, and filse opinions he had contracted in tlie former." 

"All fits of pleasure are balanced by an e([ual d -gree of pain or languor ; 
it is like spending this year part of next year's revenue." 

"Would a writer know how to behave himself with rela'ion to posterity, 
let him consider m old books what he timls that he is glad to know." 

"A very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing 
to live another time." 

" Matrimony has many children ; Repentance, Discord, Poverty, Jealousy, 
Sickness, Spleen, Loathing," kc. 

In his letter to a Young Clergyman, he gives the following advice: 

"I sliould likewise have been glad if you had applied \ our.-elf a little 
more to tlie study of the Erjglish hcuguage tlian I fear you have done ; the 
neglect whereof is one of the most general delects among the seholars of this 
kingdom, who seem not to iiave the least concejition of a sUle, but run on 
in a Hat kind of phraseology, otten mingled with barbarous terms and ex- 
pressions }Hculiar to the nation. . . . Proper words in proper places 
make the true definition of a style." 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — Swift's mastery of the language for purposes of 
ridicule is universally allowed to be unsurpassed. His range ia 
indeed somewhat too wide for ordinary tastes ; in the process of 
"debasing and defiling," he sometimes condescends to use the 
language of the brothel. The propensity to shuck decorum cost 
him the favour of Queen Anne and a bishopric. 

His diction is praised for its grammatical purity. We have just 
seen that he was particular about not using barbarous terms. 
"He stuilied purity; and though perliaps all his strictures" [his 
syntax] " are not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be 
found ; and whoever depends on his authority, may generally con- 
clude himself safe." 

Sentences and Paragraphs. — In point of syntax, our author is 
so much more correct thnn any writer belore Johnson that he 
sometimes gets the credit of establishing modem giammar. Doubt- 
less he profited greatly by his residence with the finically stu.lioua 
Temple. If his syntax is more uniformly correct than Temple's, 



3G6 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

be certainly owes to Tenii)le the habit of being particular in tliisi 
matter. We can distinctly trace his master's influence in the 
finished compacting of his sentences. 

It is matter of praise that no other peculiarity calls for special 
remark. He is neither strikingly periodic, nor strikingly loose, 
nor strikingly jiointed. His ediica'ion under Temple taught him 
the period and [)oint ; his natural love of sim[ilicity kept him 
from pushing these forms to an extrema The consequence is, 
that the reader's attention is not siiccially drawn to any one form, 
which is so far the i)erl'ecti'in of sentence style. Farther, with his 
natural clearness, he is fairly attentive to the placing of words, and 
to the unity of ids sentences. 

From Temple also he learned to study method, both in the 
general arrangement of a discourse and in the disposition of para- 
graphs. Almost vehemently anxious to be followed and under- 
stood, he is explicit in referring us to what has been said, what is 
to come, and what is the connection of one thing with another. 

One of his paragraph arts deserves to be exemplified. He often, 
but not obtrusively often, reserves a telling point for the end. 
This art is seen in the three following paragraphs from his letter 
of advice to a Young Lady on her marriage : — 

'* I nmst likewise warn you striot'y against the least degree of fondness to 
yonr huslinmi lii-t'ore any witness wliatsoever, even before your nearest rela- 
tions, or tlie very niaiils of your cliainbei'. This laoceeding is so exceeding 
odious and disi;ustful to all wlio have eitlier good breeding or good sense, 
that they assign two very unaniiahle veisons for it ; tl:e one is gross hy))oc- 
risy, and tlie other has too ba<l a name to mention. If tiiere is any diifer- 
ence to be made, your husband is the lowest person in company either at 
liniue or abr(jad, and every gentleman present has a better claim to all marks 
of civility and distinction from you. Conceal your esteem and love in your 
own Ijteast. and reserve your kind looks and languiige for private lionrs ; 
which are so many in -the foiir-and-twenty, that they will alford time to 
eni]doy a passion as exalted as any that was ever described iu a French 
romam-e. 

" Upon this he:id 1 should likewise advise you to ditl'cr in practice from 
those ladies who affect abundance of uneasiness while their liusbands are 
alu'oad ; stait with every knock at the door, and ring the bell incessantly 
for the servants to let in their master ; will not eat a bit of dinner or supner 
if the husband liap|ieiis to stay out ; and receive him at his return with sucti 
a medley of idiidiiii,' and kiuiliiess, and catechising him where he has been, 
that a shrew from Billingsgate would be a more easy and eligible companion. 

" Of the same lea\en are those wives who, when their lnisi)ands are gone a 
journey, must have a letter every post, n])oii jiain of fits and hysterics ; and 
a day must be fixed for their return home, without the least allowance for 
business, or sickness, or accidcTits, or weather ; upon whiih I can only say 
that in my ob^ervation tlmse lailies who are apt to make the greatest chatter 
on su(di occasions, would lilierally have paid a messenger for briuging them 
news that their husbands had broken their necks on the road." 

Figures of Speech — Similitudes. — No general statement can be 



JONATHAN SWIFT. 367 

made regarding our author's use of figures of similarity. Some of 
his writings are very plain, and some of them are very figurative. 
Setting aside ' Gulliver's Travels,' which affects the blunt diction 
of a seafcaring c;iptain, and not forgetting that the work as a whole 
is one sustained similitude, we may say that when he writes 
seriously his language is simple, unadorned, and designed above 
everything to convey his meaning diiectly; and that when he 
writes in a spirit of ridicule he gives free pl;>y to his fancy.^ Even 
this neeils modification. His gravest didactic is enlivened by 
strong and apt similes and metaphors. Nothing could be more 
absurd than the idea that he never uses metaphors. It is said to 
be a boast of his own ; if so, he must have meant by metaphors — 
euphemisms for "nasty ideas." In that quarter he always calls a 
spade a spade. 

One thing is very remarkable and characteristic in his simili- 
tudes ; they never elevate a subject, excejit in irony. On the 
other hand, they frequently debase, and that to no ordinary depth. 
His allusions are often extremely gross. 

A quotation or two will illustrate the character of his simili- 
tudes. The first is on the worship of Clothes, which Carlyle 
acknowledges as a "dim anticipation" of his Piiilosophy : — 

"The worshippers of this deity had also a s}'.stem of tli^^ir belief, which 
seemed to tiiin upon the fnUowiug iundanieiitals. Tliey held the uiiiveise 
to be a lari;e suir of clothes, wbirh invests everything: that the earth is 
invested by the nir ; the air is invested by the stms, and the stars are in- 
vested by \.he primum mobile. Look upon this gMie of earth, you will find 
it to be a very complete and fashionable dress. What is that whieh some 
call land, but a fine coat faced with green ? or the sea, but a waistcoat of 
water tabby ? Proceed to the particular works of tlie creation, you will find, 
how curious a journeyman Nature has been to trim uj) the vegetHlile beaux; 
observe how s]iarkisli a jieriwig adorns the licad of a beech, and wliat a tine 
doublet of satin is worn by the birch. To conclude from all, what is man 
himself but a mierocoat, or rather a complete suit of clothes with all its 
trimmings? As to his body there can be no disfiute ; but examine even the 
requirements of his mind, you will find them all contribute in their order 
towards furnishing out an exact dress : to instance no more ; is not religion 
a cloak, lionesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a suitout, 
vanity a sliiit, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, thougli a cover," 
&c. 

' ' The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold : either, 
first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their litles exactly, and 
then briig of their acquaintance ; or, secondly, wliich is indeed the choicer, 
the piofounder, and jioliter method, to get a thorough insight into the in- 
dex, by which tlie wbole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the 
tail. For to enter the palac" of learning at the great gate rei[iiires an ex- 
pense of time and funiis ; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony 



1 Dr Johnson places the 'Tale of a Tub' by itself for "copiousness of images 
and vivacity of diction ; " but others of his ironical pieces are of the same char- 
acter. See the " Letter to a Youug Poet." 



368 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

are content to get in by the back-door. For the arts art all in a An in!» 
marcli, and therefore more easily siilMlnp<l by attacking th» ra in tlie n-ar. 
'J'hus ]ihvvi(:i,ins discover the state of the whole body, by consulting only 
wliat ciinies from beiiind. Tims men catrh knowh-di;.' by tlirowing their 
wit on the posteriors nf a book, as l)'>ys do sparrows, with iiiii^iiii,' salt njioa 
their tails. Thus human life is best understood by tlie wise man's rule of 
always regarding the end." 

"To my certain knowledge, some of our greatest wits in yonr poetical 
way have not as much real h-arning as wouhl cover sixpence in the bottom 
of a bnsiu ; nor do 1 think the w> rse, of them ; for, to sj)i'ak my private 
opinion, 1 urn for every man's working upon his own materials, and jirodiic- 
ing only what he can liiid within himself, which is commonly a better stock 
than the.owner knows it to be. I think flowers of wit ought to s])ring, as 
those in a garden do, from their own root and stem, without foreign a.ssist- 
ance. I would liave a man's wit rather like a fountain, that feeds itself 
invisibly, than a river, that is supplied by several streams from abroad. 

" Or if it be necessary, as the case is with some barren wits, to take in the 
thoughts of others in oi-der to draw forth their own, as dry pnmi)s will not 
play till water is thrown into them ; in that necessity, I would recommend 
some of the apjiroved standard authors of antiquity for your perusal as a 
poet and a wit, l)ecaiise inagLjots being what you look for, as monkeys do 
for vermin in their keepers' heads, you will find they abound in good old 
authors, as in rich old clieese, not in the new ; and for that reason you must 
have the classics, especially the worm-eaten of them, often in your han^ls." 

Allegory. — Tlie ' Tale of a Tub ' and ' Gulliver's Travels ' are the 
two most fini.shed allegories in our language. Perhaps greater 
constructive skill is shown in the Tale than in the Travels. The 
Dean is said to have exclaimed in his o!d age, " What a genius I 
had when I wrote that book ! " In the Travels he has no fi.Kcd 
order to observe, and can introduce his satirical allusions when and 
where he pleases; but in the Tale he undertakes to allegorise a 
history. A father dies leaving three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack 
(Po|>ery, Episcopalianism, and Presbyterianisiu, re})re.sented .by the 
apostle Peter, Marthi Luther, and Jack Calvin). He has no great 
proj)erty to bequeath, so he bequeaths them each a coat (a system 
of worship), with a body of directions how to preserve it. This 
will of his represents the Bible. The three sous soon fall into the 
ways of the world, and overlay their coats with all the fashionable 
trimmings — at fir.st evading the will by ingenious iiiterjiretations, 
but finally locking it up and never referring to it. By-and-by 
Martin and Jack have thoughts of reforming ; steal a copy of the 
will; and are kicked our of doors by Peter. They then reform in 
earnest, Martin cautiously, Jack impetuously : Martin picking otf 
the adventitious gold lace, silver fringes, flame-cnloured lining, etc., 
carefully, so as not to injure the garment ; Jack tearing off these 
ornaments with such violence as to leave his coat in tatters. Jack 
quarrels with Martin for his want of zeal, separates from him in a 
nige, runs mad, und sets up all kinds of strange doctrine. [The 



JONATHAN SWIFT, 369 

bias of the allegory, it may be remarked, is strongly in favour of 
the English Church.] 

One of the most ingenious, and at the same time one (if the 
coarsest chapters, is the account of Jack's doctrine of holism 
(from ^olus, the god of wind). It is a satire on the Puritan 
belief in the special inspiration of preachers by the H<ily Ghost. 
The beginning is an example of his ingenuity in bringing scat- 
tered jjarticulars under a common idea : — 

" The learned ^olists inaiiit;iin the original cause of all things to be wind, 
from wliich ])rinciple this wlmle iuiiver.se was at lirst, jjrotluced, and into 
which it must, at hi^t be resolved; tliat the sanie breath which liiid kindled 
and blew n]i the flame of nature, should one day blow it out. This is what 
the adepti understand by tlieir ani/na mundi ; that is to say, the spirit, or 
breatl), or wind of the world; for, examine the whole system by tlie ]>ar- 
ticulars of nature, and you will find it not ti be disputed. For whether you 
please to call the /orma inforinans of man by the name o^ spirit as, animus, 
afflatus, or anima ; what are all these hut Siveral ap[)ellations for wind, 
which is the ruling element in every compound, and into which they all 
resolve upon their corruption ? Fartlier, what is life itself but, as it is com- 
tnouly called, the breath of our nostrils? whence it is very justly observed 
by naturalists, that wind still continues of great emolument in certain mys- 
teries not to be named," &c. 

The following seems intended for an allegorical description of 
General Assemblies among the Presbyterians : — 

" At certain seasons of the year you might behold the priests among them 
in vast numbers, with their moutiis gaping wide against a stnrni. At otiier 
times were to be seen several hundieds linked together in a circular cliain, 
with every man a pair of liilhuvs apjilied to his neighiioui's breech, by which 
they blew up each otlier to tlie size of a tun ; and for that reason, with givat 
propriety of sjieech, did usually call their bodies their vessels. AVhen, by 
these and the like jierformances, they were grown sufficiently replete, they 
would immediately depart, and disembogue, for the imblic good, a plentiful 
share of their acquirements into their diacijjles' cliaps." 

Irony. — Of this art Swift is a consummate master. The best- 
known specimens of his skill are — 'An Argument to prove that 
the abolishing of Cbiistianity in England may, as things now 
stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not 
produce those many good effects proposed thereby;' and 'A 
Modest Proposal for jireventing the chiklren of poor people in 
Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for 
making them beneficial to the public' As compared with Defoe's 
irony, the wit of these pieces is more subtle and surprising. The 
opening of the " Argumeiit" is inimitably happy ; he affects to be 
in a minority, and apologises for venturing to oppose the general 
opinion : — 

"I am very sensible what a weakness and presumption it- is to reason 
against the general humour and (lispositinii of the wm-hL I n-nu'iiilier it 
was, with gieat justice aud due regai-d to the freeuom lioth of the public and 

1 A 



370 FKOM 17i'0 TO 1730. 

the press, forbidden upon several penalties to write or discotuse, or lay 
wa.£;ers aj^uinst tlie Union even before it was confirmed by I'ailiainent ; be- 
cause tliat was looked upon as a design to oppose llie current of tlie people, 
which, besides the folly of it, is a manliest bre;ifdi of the fnnilamental law 
that makes this inajmity of opinion tlie voice of God. In lik<' m;inner, and 
for the very same reasons, it m;iy perhaps be nciiher s:ife nor prudent to 
ari,'ue against the abolishinLC of Chri.stianity at a juncture when all j):iriie3 
ajipear so unaniniouslj' determined upon the ]iciint, as we cannot but allow 
fiotn their actims, their dis'-ourses, and their writitigs. However, I know 
not how, whether from the afl'ectatioti of singularity, <>r the perverseness of 
human nature, but so it unlia))pily falls out, that 1 cannot be entirely «[' this 
opinion. Kay, though I were sui-e an order were issued for my immciliate 
prosecution by the Attorney-Geuerid, I shouhl siill conless that, in the pres- 
ent postui'e of our all'airs, at home or abroad, I do not yet see the absolute 
necessity of extirpatiui,' the Christian religion from ainong us. 

"This pi'rha|)S may appear too great a paradox even for our wise and 
paradoxical age to enilure ; therefore I shall handle it with all tenderness, 
and wirh the utmost deference to that great and jirofouud nuijority which is 
of another sentiment. 

"Every candid render will easily understaTid my discourse to be intended 
only in defence of nominal Christianity ; tlie other having been for some 
time wholly laid aside by general consent as utterly incou.sistent with our 
present .schemes of wealth and power." 

In his " Modest Proposal " about the Irish children, he begins 
by a description of the miseries of over-population, reminds ns of 
"the prodigious number of children in the anus, or on the backs, 
or at the heels of their mothers," and declares that — 

"Whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easj' method of making these 
children sound usei'ul members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well 
of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation." 

He then puts in his claim to the distinction of such a discovery. 
He proposes — 

" To provide for them in such a manner as, instead of being a charge upon 
their parents or the parish, or wanting food and rniment for tlio rest of their 
lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the 
clothing, of nuiny thousands." 

What, then, is the scheme ? — 

" 1 have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in 
London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most 
delicious, ni urishing, antl wholesome tbod, whether stewed, roasted, baked, 
or boiled ; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a 
ragout. 

" I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of tho 
120.000 children already com|uited, 20,000 may he reserved for breed, 
whereof only one-fourih part to be males, which is more than we allow to 
sheep, black (t;ittle, or swine ; and my reason is, that these children are 
Seldom the fruits of marriage, a circnmstame not much regarded by our 
savages, tlierel'ore one male will be sullicient to serve h)ur females. Tli;it 
till- riMiiaining 10o,()0o luiiy, at a year old, be offered in sale to the ]iersons 
of iiuality and ibrtune through the kingdom, ahvaj's advising the mother to 



JONATHAN SWIFT. 371 

let tliem suck plentifully in the Inst mouth, so as to reuihr them pluuip and 
fat tor a good lahle. A child will m.ike two dishes at au euieitainiiient toi 
friends ; and when the family dines alone, the tore or hind quaitei- will make 
a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little ]iepper or salt, will be very 
good boiled on tlie Iburih day, esperially in winter. 

" I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for 
landlorus, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to 
have the best title to the children. 

"Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may 
flay the carcase; the skin of which, artitically dressed, will make admirable 
gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine i,'entlemen. 

"As to •ur City of Dublin, shambles may be ainiointcd for this purpose in 
the most convenient ]iarts of it, and butchers, we may be assured, will not 
be wanting ; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then 
dressing them liot from the knife, as we do roasting-pigs. " 

The above are perhaps the more horrible details of this horrible 
proposal. The conclusion is a veiy fine stroke of wit, as carrying 
out the consistency of the irony to the greatest possible heii^ht : — 

" I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal 
interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other 
motive than the public good of my country, by aiivancing our trade, provid- 
ing for infants, lelieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I 
have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest 
being nine years old, and my wile past child-bearing." 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. — " His delight was in simplicity. His style was 
■well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice 
disquisitions, decorated by sjiarkling conceits, elevated by am- 
bitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought leaining. . . 
He always tmderstands liiinself, and his readers always under- 
stand hiiu : the peruser of Swift wants little previous knowledge; 
it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and 
common things ; he is neither required to mount elevations nor to 
explore profundities; his passage is always on a level, along solid 
ground, without asperities, without obstruction." ^ 

The Drapier Letters were written in peculiarly familiar styla 
Wlioever wishes to model upon Swift in this respect, must not for- 
get that his simplicity verges on coarseness. 

Clearness. — It is not always Swift's desire to make his meaning 
distinct. One of his arts is to hide it away under similitudes. 
When he does wish to be beyond posbildlity of mistake, he knows 
how to accomplish the object. He does not deal with subjects 
Avhere sin<;le words are much open to diflferent interpretations by 
different readers, and so has not much room for showing his skill 
in preventing ambiguity. But he is careful to make his words fit 

1 Johnson, Life of Swift. 



372 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

close to his idea-;, and often brings out his meaning sharply, by 
contrasting it with wliat he does not mean. 

Streufith. — His diction is emphatic and copious, and the intense 
force of his satire is unsiirpassed. Jolinson's saying, that "he 
pays no court to tlie passions, he excites neither surprise nor ad- 
miration," ^ is a hasty judgment that needs qualification. If we 
accept it, we must understand by passion — sublimity ; and by sur- 
prise and admiration, the elevation of sublimity. Nothing couM 
be more sur[>rising or impressive than the flashes of Swift's wit; 
and of passion, in one sense, there is enough, and more than enough, 
in the Drapier's Letters : — 

" Oooil G'hI ! who are tliis wreteli's advisers? Who are his sn])porters, 
ahett'ii.s, eueonragprs, or sharers? Mr Wood will obliije me to lake tive- 
peiice-linllpcniiy ol' his luass in every payment; and I will shoot Mr Wood 
ioid his depiuies throu<,di the head, like highwaymen or housebreakers, if 
they dare to force one fartiiing of their coin on nie in the pnytnent of £100. 
It is no loss of hniionr to submit to the lion ; but who, with the figure of a 
man, can think with ]iatience of being devoured alive liy a rat? He has 
laid a tax upon the people of Ireland of 17s. at least in tlie pound ; a tax, I 
s;iy, not only upon lands, but interest-money, goods, mauufactures, the hire 
of handiiTarrsmcn, labnuiers, ami servants. 

'' Shopkeepcis, look to yourselves ! " &c. 

Pathos. — Swift had such a hatred of insincere sentiment, and 
such a tendency to Ijelieve every open profession of sentiment to 
be insincere, that he seldom, if ever, wrote a word either of affec- 
tion or of compassion in any work intended for publication. The 
only exceptions that I have remarked are in the Drapier Letters, 
where he expresses an indignant pity for the sufferings of Ireland, 
and makes a lofty profession of the disinterestedness of his public 
si)irit. The Journal to Stella was not intended for the public eye. 
There he indulges without constraint in infantine expressions of 
fonJness: Stella is "sirrah Stella," " Stellakins," "rogue Stella," 
"pretty Stella," " MD," "little MD," "dearest MD," "dear, 
roguish, impudent, pretty MD." 

"How now, sirrah, must I write in a morning to your impudence I 

Slay till niL'lit 
Ami tlieii I'll write 
In lilack and white 
By c.-mdle-li-lit 
or wax so liriL;ht 
]t liolps til.' sight 
A bite, a bite 1 

Marry come np, Mrs Boldface." 



1 Sir W. Scott is more exact—" He never attempted any species of composition 
in wl'icli either tlie sublime or the pathetic were required of him. But in every 
department of poetry where wit is necessary, he displayed, as the subject chanced 
to refjuire, either the blasting lightning of satire, or the lambent and meteor- 
like coiuscatious of frolicsome humour." 



JONATHAN SWIFT. 373 

The Ludicrous. — He is pre-eminently a satirist ; nol^ody can pre- 
tend to dispute bis title of the prince of English Satirists. 

In the ludicrous degradation of his victims, he makes no affec- 
tation of kin Illness, and parades rather than disguises his con- 
tempt. Readers that are nijt subdued by the charms of his wit 
pronounce him coarse, insolent, unfeeling, and turn from his pages 
with aversion. This is one difference between him and Addison; 
they agree in being derisive rather than humt)rous. 

From Addison he differs still more in the extent and force of 
his satire. Addison has a few pet objects of ridicule. Swift 
exempts from his ridicule no profession, no foible, hardly any 
institution, hardly any character. Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, 
authors, politicians, wits, demonstrative affection, coxcombry, the 
behaviour of ladies, bad manners, Popery, Presbyterianisni, educa- 
tion, and, one may say in general, every individual that crosses 
his opinions — all come in for a cut of his stinging lash. 

There are some fair specimens of insulting sarcasm among his 
'Thoughts on various subjects' : — 

"Query, whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of 
the dead ? " 

"Apollo was held tlie god of physic and sender of diseases. Both were 
originally tlie same trade, and still continue." 

"The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his 
countenance, and never to keep his word." 

"A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few 
words sfjoken plain by a parrot." 

"A nice man is a man of nasty ideas." 

" If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their 
works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever 
had any." 

His advice "to a very young lady on her marriage" is an ex- 
cellent specimen of rough sarcastic counsel, wholesome, but not in 
the slightest accommodated to the palate. See p. 366. 

A very favourite stroke at the free-thinkers and the wits is 
Id set forth ironically the advantages of the Church and of 
Christianity : — 

"It is objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of men 
should be sutl'ered, much less emjtloyed and hired, to bawl oue day in seven 
against the lawfuhiess of th<ise methods most in use towards the jiursuit of 
greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant practice of all men 
alive on the other six. But the oljection is, I think, a little unworthy of 
80 refined an nge as ours. Let us argue this matter calmly : I api)eal to the 
breast of any polite free-thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a 
predominant passion, he has not always felt a wonderi'ul incitement by 
reflecting that it was a thing forbi<lden ; and therefore we see, in order to 
cultivate this taste, the wisdom of the nntiDU has taken special care that the 
ladies should be luiiiished with prohibited silks, and the men with pro- 



374 FUUM 1700 TO 1730. 

hihited wine. And indeed it were to be wislied that .some other prohibi- 
tions were promoted, in order to improve the plca.snre.s of the town; wiiich, 
lor want of .sucli t'X|ietiients, bei,au already, as I am told, to flag and grow 
languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads from the sideen." 

He is dissatisfied with modern education : — 

"From frequently reflecting upon the course and method of educating 
youth in tliis and a neighbouring kia,i,alom, with the geneial success and 
consequence thereof, I am come to this determiuaiion ; that education is 
always the worse in ])roportion to the wealtli and grandeur of tlie parents ; 
nor do I doubt in tiie least, that if the whole world were now under the 
donnnion of one monarch (provided I mii,dit be allowed to choose wheie he 
should I'or.m the seat of his empire), the only son and heir of that monarch 
would be the worst educated mortal that ever was born sim-e the creation; 
and 1 doubt the same proportion will hold through all degrees and titles, 
from an emperor downwards to the common gentry." 

"Another hindrance to good education, and I think the greate.st of any, 
is that pernicious custom in rich and noble families, of entertaining French 
tutors in their houses. These wretched pedagogues are enjoined by the 
father to take special care that the boy shall he perfect in his French ; by 
the mother, that master must not walk till he is hot, nor be sutfereii to play 
with other boys, nor be wet in his feet, nor ilaub his clothes, and to .see the 
dancing-master attends constantly and does his duty ; the father insists 
that he be not kept too long poiing on his book, because he is subject to 
Bore eyes, and of a weakly constitution." 

In his treatise on good manners, he is very contemptuous about 
the practice of duelling : — 

" I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws 
against tiie practice of duelling ; because the methods are easy and many for 
a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or engage in it with innocence. 
And I can discover no political evil in sutfering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, 
to rid the world of each other by a method of their own, where the law has 
not been able to find an expedient." 

By nature extremely impatient of whatever was troublesome, he 
hated over-civility. One of his Tatlers is a coarse exaggeration 
of overdone hospitality. When sneering at the multiplication of 
ceremonies, he relates a ridiculous accident, without caring to con- 
ceal names : — 

" Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, whose politics and manners were 
mnch of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteen years old, to a ereat 
table at Court. The boy and his fatlier, whatever they put on tlieir plates, 
they first oHVrpd round in order to every j'crson in company ; so that we 
could not get a minute's (jniet dining the whole dinner. At last their two 
plates happened to eni ountor, and with so much violence that, being china, 
they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the com[>any with wet sweet- 
meats and cream." 

His personal .sarcasms are very contemptuous. He alludes to 
Defoe as " the fellow that was pilloried, I forget his name." He 
is merciless on poor John Dennis : — 



JONATHAN SWIFT, 37 o 

"One Dennis, commonly called 'the critic,' who liad wiit a thrceyienny 
pam('hlet against the power of France, being in the country, and hearing of 
a Frentdi privateer hovering about tlie coast, althougli he were twenty miles 
from tlie sea. fled to town, and told liis friends tliey need not wonder at his 
haste; for the King of France, having got intelligence where he was, had 
sent a privateer on purpose to catch him." 

One of the special objects of his pitiless dislike was Burnet the 
historian. He ridiculed the ' History of my own Times' under 
the allegory of the ' Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish.' 
Swift's copy of the history has been preserved; the marginal 
comments are good specimens of the peculiar turn of his wit 
I quote one or two as they are given in Collet's 'Relics of 
Literature ' : — 

Preface, p. 3, Burnet. — " Indeed, the peevishness, the ill-nature, and 
the ambiiion of many clergymen, have shaipened my spirits perhaps too 
much against them ; so I icarn my readers to take all tliat I say on those 
heads with some grains of allowance." Swift. — " I will take his learning " 

P. 28. Burnet. — " The Earl of Argyle was a more solemn sort of man, 
grave and s.iber, and free of all s^candalous vices." Sivift. — " As a man is 
free of a corporation, he means." 

P. 5. Burnet. — " Upon the King's death, the Scots proclaimed his son 
king, and sent over Sir George Wincan, that married ony great aiint, to 
treat with him wliile he was in the Isle of Jersey." Swift. — " Was that the 
reason why he was sent ? " 

P. 163. Burnet (speaking of ' Paradise Lost'). — " It was esteemed the 
beautifullest and }ierfectest [loem that ever was writ, at least in our lan- 
guage." Swift. — "A mistake! iox it is in Emjlish." 



KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Persuasion. — Swift's pamjihlet on 'The Conduct of the Allies' 
is said to have told with unexampled effect; to have revolution- 
ised public feeling, and overturned a ])0\veiful Ministry. For ten 
years, in union with Germany and Holland, we had fought against 
the succession of a French prince to the Spanish throne ; wp had 
won four splendid victories, and yet seemed in no hurry to make 
reasonable overtures of peace. Dazzled by Marlborough's success, 
the people had no sifspicion that the war was protracted to fill his 
pockets. Swift's pamphlet changed the aspect of things as by 
enchantment; it was read everywhere, and raised popular indig- 
nation to such a height, that, within a year after its a[)pearance, 
a new Government was formed, which concluded the famous 
Treaty of Utiecht. 

Johnson thinks that "the efficacy of this wonder-working pam- 
phlet was supplied by the passions of its readers ; that it operated 
by the mere ^veight of facts with a very little assistance from the 
hand that produced them." But the art of the pamphleteer lay in 
bringing the popular passions into exercise — in picking out, and 



376 Fi;OM 17(10 TO 1730. 

showing in striUig li^lit, facts that were escaping general notice- 
in relieving tlie public from tlie fascination of military success, and 
fixing their eyi^'S on the other side of the picture. 

If the ' Conduct of the Allies ' gained its end by a skilful pre.v 
entation of facts in a calm statement, the Drapier Letters were 
performances of a very different kind. A Mr Wood, a large owner 
of mines, had olitained from Government a i)atent for issuing, under 
certain regulations, a copper coinage of halfpence for Ireland. In 
Ireland, then as now, there was strong jealousy of England; and 
Swift, striking in against the project, took full advantage of the 
national feeling. The need of a cop[)er coinage was glaring and 
urgent — he could say nothing on tliat score ; but he represented 
tliat the Irish Houses of Parliament had previously requested leave 
to coin and issue the needful money, and had been refused. What 
was refused to the nobility and gentry of Ireland had l)een granted 
to this man — " a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer." Swift 
makes no attempt to argue the justice of the proceeding. He 
hea[)S abuse upon Wood,' asserts against him audaciously ground- 
less charges, pictures the most unreasonable consequences of the 
measure, and pours out hot appeals to the passions of his readers. 

The following quotations illustrate the kind of reasoning he 
used. When to these ludicrous exaggerations of the inconveni- 
ence of exchange the simple answer was made that nobody would 
be obliged to take more than fivepence-halfpenny in copper. Swift 
blustered about confining the liberty of the subject. But for the 
strong feeling existing against England, which blinded the Irish 
to every consideration of reason, the Drapier would have been 
laughed at. As it was, had the Government refused to give way, 
his violent and hot exaggerations would have raised an armed re- 
bellion, and his apparent patriotism made him a national hero : — 

" Suppose yon go to an al(;house with that base money, and the landlord 
gives you a (jnart for four of those halfpence, what must tlie victualler do? 
liis brewer will not lie paid in that coin ; or, if the brewer should be such a 
fool, the farmers will not take it from tlieni for their here, liecauso they iire 
bound by their leases to pav iheir rent in good and lawful money of Eug- 
land ; which this is not, nor of Ireland neither; anil the 'squire their land- 
lord will never be so bewitched to take sucli trasli for his laud ; so that it 
must certainly stop somewhere or other ; and wherever it stops, it is the 
same thing, and we are all undone." 

" If a squire has a mind to come to town to buy clothes, and wine, and 
spices, fir himself ami family, or perhaps to pass the winter here, he must 
bring with him live or six horses well laden with sacks, as the farmers bring 
their corn ; and when his lady comes in her coach to our sliojis, it must be 
followed by a car loaded with Mr Wood's money. And I hope we sliall 
have the grace to take it for no more than it is worth." 

1 See p. 372. 



JOSEril ADDISON. 377 

"And let me in tlie next place appl}' myself particnlnrly to yon who are 
the poorer sort of trmlesnien. I'erliaps you may tliiiik you will not be so 
great losers as the rich if these lialfpeuce should p;iss; because you seldom 
see any silver, and your customers come to your shojjs or stalls with nothing 
but brass, which you likewise find hard to be got. But you niav t:ike my 
word, whenever this money gains footing among you, you will be utterly 
undone. If you carry these halfpence to a shop for tobacco or brandy, or 
any other thing that you want, the shopkeeper will advance his goods 
accordiiiudy, or else he must break and leave the key under the door. ' Do 
you thiuk I will sell you a yard of tenpenny stuff for twenty of Air Wood's 
halfpence? no, not under 200 at least; neither will I be at the trouble of 
counting, but weigh thein in a lump.' I will tell you one thing further, 
that it Mr Wood's piojeet should take, it would ruin even our beggars ; for 
when I trive a b g'-;ar a liairpenny, it will quench his thirst, or go a good 
way to lill his belly ; but the twelfth part of a hallpeijny "ill do him no 
more service thau if I should give him three pins out of my sleeve." 

JOSEPH ADDISOU-, 1672-1719. 

Speaking of the age of William and Anne, ]\Iacau!ay says — 
"Tliere was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of liter- 
ary merit were so splendil, at which men who could write well 
found such easy admittance into tlie most distinguished society, 
and to the highest honours of the State." Nobody profited more 
than Addison by tliis accident of the times. His abilities were 
very soon recognised by the Whig leaders. The son of Lancelot 
Addison, Rector of Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse and Mag- 
dalen College, Oxford, he was dis.suaded from his design of enter- 
ing the Church by Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, 
who procured him a pension from King William, and sent him to 
travel in France and Italy (i 699-1 702). Eeturning to England on 
the death of William, which had stopped his pension, he gained 
some reputation by a poem commemorating the victory of Blen- 
heim (1704); and, having thus proved his value to a party, was 
in 1705 made Under-Secretary of State. Thereafter he held 
various political offices: was appointed Keeper of the Recoids 
of Ireland in 1709; Secretary to the Regency on the demise of 
Queen Anne in 17 14; one of the Lords of Trade under George 
I.; one of the Chief Secretaries of State in 17 17. From these 
high posts he drew a large income, while he had considerable 
leisure for writing. He died in 1719, leaving one daughter by 
the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had married three 
years before, and who added little to his comfort while he was 
alive. 

Addison's first prose composition, his 'Dialogues on Medals,' 
was written during his Continental travels. In 1702 he pub- 
lished an account of his travels in Italy, remarkable for happy 
allusions to ancient Roman history and literature. His fame aa 
a prose writer rests on his contributions to periodical papers — • 



378 FKOM 170(1 TO 1730. 

the 'Tatler,' the ' Spectator,' and the 'Guardian.' Tlie 'Tatler' 
was commenced on April 12, 1709, by Sir Kichard .Steele, un ier 
the a.s.sumed name of Isaac J'ickerstafF. Addison, wlio was tlien 
in Ireland, detected the author by a passage in tlie si.\th number, 
and sent his first ascertained cimtribution to No. 20, May 26. 'I'lie 
paper appeared three times a-week. Addison did not become a 
regular contributor till his return from Ireland in September. Tlie 
last number of the 'Tatler' appeared on January 2, 1711. On 
the demise of the 'Tatler,' Steele projected the ' S[)ectator,' to be 
issued daily: it continued from March i, 171 1, to December 6, 
17 1 2, and during all that time Ad lison was a frequent contrib- 
utor, writing mure than half of the numbers. The 'Guardian,' also 
a daily paper, extended from March 12 to October i, 1713 ; Addi- 
son's contributions were chieiiy to the later numbers. In 17 14 
came out what is known as the Eighth Volume of the ' Spectator' ; 
of this nearly all the first half was written I'y Addison. 

The 'Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the 'Guardian' formally ex- 
cluded politics; their professed purpose was to discuss the fashions 
and manners of society, the })ulpit, the theatre, the opera, and 
general literature ; in short, they weie open to all the subjects 
now discussed in the ' Saturday Review,' the ' Spectator,' or the 
'Examiner,' except politics. In this respect they differed from 
the 'Review' of Defoe, the real prototype of modern periodicals. 
But while they excluded politics in form, Addison, as we shall see, 
in many of his papers was in no small degree influenced by politi- 
cal |>rejudices. 

Besides these universally-known performances, Addison wrote 
some strictly political papers: in 1707, a pamphlet on the 'Pres- 
ent State of tiie War' ; the 'Whig Examiner,' a weekly tract, not 
carried beyo)id the fifth number; the 'Trial of Count Tarift",' a 
satire on the commercial treaty of Utrecht, 1713 ; and 'The Free- 
holder,' a bi-weekly, carried through 55 numbers, 17 15-16. 

Addison's jiersonal appearance has not been very vividly re- 
corded. Thackeray si)eaks of " his chiselled features, pure and 
cold." We know also that he was a fair man, of a full habit of 
body, soft and flabby from winebibbing and want of exercise. 
He was so weakly a child that he was christened on the day of hia 
birth, not being expected to live. 

The most general characteristic of his intellect is happily ex- 
pressed by Johnson — "He thinks justly, but he thinks faintly." 
He is a great contrast to the prolific and vigorous Defoe. Not 
only had he little spontaneous activity of intellect, little impulsive- 
ness : this might be said of the cautious and sober Temple. More 
than this, he had not sufficient constitutional energy to be equal 
to the mere effort requisite for forming a clear and profound judg- 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 379 

merit on any question of difficulty. With his languid vitality, he 
was content to be superficial. He had naturally a fine memory 
for words, and was, in his quiet way, an accurate observer of what 
passed before him. His chief intellectual exercise was the stuly 
of " putting things" — whether things that he liad seen and heard, 
reflections that he had made upon them, or thoughts that he had 
met with in the course of his reading. He had neither scholarship 
nor original thought — "a fine gentleman living upon town, not 
professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature," and em-| 
ploying liis lei.'sure m writing elegant periodical articles.^ 

Like Cowley, he had no depth of sentiment for imagination to 
work upon. Not only so, but he was deficient in constitutional 
power of enjoyment ; he was by nature shy, irritable, an i captious, 
sitting in company reserved and taciturn, until his cups had raised 
him to the point of geniality. Even his panegyrist Thackeray 
admits — " I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or 
that he indulged very inordinately in the ' vanity of grieving.' " 
"This great man was also one of the lonely ones of the world." 
The chief emotion that he cultivated may be described in the 
words of Johnson as "gay malevolence and satirical humour": 
the malevolence being due to his constitntional incapacity for 
enjoyment — to ill-nature, in the strict sense of the words ; while 
the gaiety or humour arises chiefly from the delicate elegance of 
his langnage, and the writer's pleasure in the exercise of his gift. 
His essays on Milton and on the Pleasures of the Imagination 
would seem to show that, though he had not energy to write with 
sublimity himself,^ he enjoyed sublime writing when it was pre- 
sented to him ; he could at least utter the formula of indolent 
admiration — "There is a pleasure in what is great, in what is 
beautiful, and in what is new." 

Although engaged in politics, he had no natural gifts for active 

1 "With reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular 
notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinc- 
tion. It is alreaily pretty well known that Addison had no very intimate ac- 
quaintance with the literature of his own country. It- is known, also, ihat he did 
not think such an acquaintance any wnys essential to the character of an eh-gant 
B'-ho\a.v litMl litterateur. Quite eijough he found it, and ni'Te than enough for 
the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the 
foremost Latin poets, and a very slender one indeed with the Grecian. JIow 
slender, we can see in his Tiavels." — De Quincey, xv. 8. 

2 '' Though Addison generally hated the imjiassioned, and shrank from it as 
from a feaifid thing, yet this was when it condjined with forms ol life and fleshly 
realities (as in dramatic works), but not when it combinL-d with elder forms of 
eternal abstractions. Hence he did not read, and did not like, Shaks])eare — the 
music was here too rapid and lifelike ; but he symjiathised profounilly with the 
solemn cathedral chanting of Milton. An appeal to h s sympathies which ex- 
acted quick changes in those symjiathies he coukl not meet, but a more station- 
ary key of solemnity he could." — De Quincey, vii. 56. This is explained by hia 
want of constitutional energy, and consequent incapability of supporting ex- 
citement. 



380 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

life. He could not have made his own jiosition ; the accident of 
the times rendered literary service valuable, and he was viitually 
nothing more tli;in the literary retainer and proterje of the lenders 
of a party, liis easy indolent habits, with some other features of 
hid character, ai>pear in the following sketch by Johnson : — 

"Of tlie conrsp of AiMison's familiar day, before liis iiianiage, Pope lias 
(riven a detail. He had in the lioiise witli liim Biidgi-ll, and porliujis riiili])S. 
His uhief coinjiaiiioiis were Steele, Hiidf^cll, l'l,ili|).s [Aiubrose], Cart-y, Da- 
venaiit, and Colnnid Brett. With one ur oilier of these lie always lireak- 
tasted. He studied all morning; tlnn dined at a tavern ; and went altiT- 
wards to Button's. Button iiad been a servant in tlie Countess of Warwick's 
taniily, who, under tlie patronage of Addison, ke])t a eoffi-e Imuse on tlie 
soutli hide of Russell Street, about two doors from C'ovent Garden, Here it 
was tliiit the wiLs of the time used to assemble. It is saitl, when Addison 
had sidIVi((l any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company 
fiom Button's Imuse. From the coffee-liouse he weut ;ig:iiii to a tavern, 
where lie olten sat bite, and drank too much wine. In the ijottle discontent 
seeks for ronifort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness lor confidence. It 
is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the mauumissioa 
which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours." 

His conduct generally was marked by great prudence. He made 
few enemies. He was at great pains to conciliate Swift, "Of his 
virtue it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party has 
transmitted no charge of any crime," Yet his irritable temper 
was not under thorough control. On one occasion he put aa 
execution in force against Steele for a hundred pounds that his 
im])rovident friend had borrowed, and he has never been cleared 
of the charge of jealous inti iguing against Pope. De Quincey, in 
his ' Life of Pope,' says that ''Addison's petty manoeuvring against 
Po^ie proceeded entirely from malignant jealousy. That Addison 
was more in the wrong even than has generally been supposed, 
and Pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more generous, we 
have the means at a proper op^^ortunity of showing decisively." 

Opinioiis, — In practical politics he adhered steadfastly to the 
Whigs. In 1707 he elaborately justified the war with France, 
maintaining that France and Pritain were natural enemies. He 
strongly supported the Hanoverian succession, and turned his 
most malicious and uncjualified ridicule against the " Pretender " 
and his foreign adherents. With equal animosity he satirised the 
Tory country gentlemen, or Tory fox-hunters, as he delighted to 
nickname tliem. 

Party politics, as we have sail, had no place in the 'Taller,' the 
'Spcc:ator,' and the ' CJuardian.' The jirofessed object of our 
author in these periodicals was '* to banish vice and ignorance out 
of the territories of Great Britain," and "to bring philosophy out 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 381 

of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and 
assemblies, at tea-tal)les and cofl'ee-houses." 

The minor immoralities tiiat he attacked were such as affecta- 
tion, presumption, foppery, fashionable extravagance, upstart vul- 
garity. As "vices" of the same class, he contrived to satirise the 
rustic manners of the objects of his constant aversion, the Tory 
squires, "who had never seen anything greater than themselves 
for twenty years." 

In criticising polite literature, he gave his opinions on the 
Opera, on Tragedy, on True and False Wit, on Sappho, on Uvid, 
on Milton, and on the Pleasures of the Imagination. He "decided 
by taste rather than by principles " ; and the taste of such a man, 
while elegant in the highest degree, had a tendency to be captious 
and narrow. He sneered at the scenery and stage machinery buth 
of the opera and of the theatre, considering that the effect upon 
the audience should^ be produced mainly by the language of the 
play. He ridiculed the use of Italian in the opera — for which 
De Quincey makes some game of him. Under False Wit he 
reckoned Puns, Anagrams, Acrostics, Chronograms, Crambo, and 
other agreeable ingenuities. In the case of Milton, his application 
of Aristotle's rules for epic poetry, and his selection of fine j^as- 
sages, have the credit of first drawing general notice to 'Paradise 
Lost.' ^ His papers on the Pleasures of the Imagination have no 
analytic value ; he gets no farther than that tLere is a pleasure in 
beholding the great, the beautiful, and the new. 



ELEMENTS OP STYLK 

Vocabulary. — Were we to judge from the papers on Milton, we 
should pronounce Addison's command of language rather under 
than above the average of eminent literary men.2 He is constantly 
repeating the same epithets — "inexpressibly beautiful," "wonder- 
fully poetical," "wonderfully fine and pleasing." Upon lighter 
themes his vocabulary is more varied. Choiceness and not i)ro- 
fusion is at all times his characteristic; yet we find him varying 
Lis expression with the greatest ease on simple themes. Tlius, in 
bis paper in the 'Lover' upon the female passion for china-ware, 
he describes it with considerable variety — " brii tie ware," "frail 
furniture," "perishable commodity," "all china-ware is of a weak 
and transitory nature," "the fragility <if china is such as a reason- 
able being ought by no means to set its heart upon." 

^ It is sometimes said that Addison was the first to discern Milton's excel- 
lence. This is saying ioo much. Detoe liail ]iraised Milton several years before; 
and Steele, in one ot his early 'Tatlers,' had evpressed his admiration. 

2 Lord Lytton is of opinion that Addison's command of expression was not 
first-rate. 



382 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

Scnfences. — Among our classic prose writers, Addison is the 
standing example of a loose style. He is ostentatioiusiy easy and 
flowing, making no effort to be periodic, but rather studiously 
avtiidiiig the periodic structure. In his expository papers, when 
he is not expressly aiming at point, he takes the utmost freedom 
in adding clauses of explanaion and amplification after he has 
made a full statement. Thus — 

" Every thi Hi; that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagina- 
tion, liecause it fills the soul with an ai,'reealile siirpriso, giatilies its curiosity, 
and gives it an idea of which it was not het'ore poss(.'st. We are indeed so 
otteii conversant with one. set of objects, and tired out with so niaiij' repeated 
shows of tlie same tilings, that whatever is new or uncommon coiitiiliutes a 
little to vary human life, and to divert onr minds for a while, with the 
st:rangeness of its ai)pcaraiice : it serves us for a kind of refreshment, and 
takes olf froiTi tli;it satiety we are apt to complaiu of in our usual and ordi- 
nary entertainments." 

Here the structure is very loose, and the easy way of adding 
clause to clause betrays the writer into not a little confusion, 
which we shall notice in the proper place. The following is an- 
other example of a loose tautologous sentence : — 

"They here began to breatlie a delicious kind of ether, and saw all the 
fields about tlieni covered with a kind of purple light, that made them re- 
flect with satisfaction on their past toils, and dilfnsed a secret joy through 
the whole assembl}', which showed itself in every look and feature." 

The vice of this careless structure, which within proper limits 
is not without its advantages, is the misplacing of clauses. The 
two following examples are from Irving's 'Elements of Com- 
position ' : — 

"This kind of wit was very much in vogue among our countrymen, about 
an age or two ago, who did not practise it lor any oblique reason, but purely 
for the ^ake of being witty." 

Here the clause " about an age or two ago " comes very awk- 
wardly between the relative and its antecedent, and would be 
much better disposed of at the beginning — "About an age or two 
i,go, this kind of wit," A;c. 

"The Knight, seeing his habitation reduced to so suihII a compass, and 
hiinself in a manner shut out of his own house, u[ion the deith <>f his 
mother, ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by his 
chaphdii." 

Irving remarks that here the clause " upon the death of Ids 
mother " is so idaced as to be ambiguous, and projjoses to remedy 
this by another arrangement — namely, "seeing his haliitation, 
«tc., the Knight, upon the death of his mother, ordered all the 
apartments," &c. This gets rid of the ambiguity, but is rather 
a clnmsv arrangement ; it would be better to begin with the 



JOSEPH ADDISON, 383 

clause of time — " Upon the death of his mother, the Knight," 

It is chiefly in the papers on the Plensures of the Imagination 
that the inconvenience of tliis loose style Is felt, and then; chiefly 
because it goes along with a vague and rambling train of thought. 
On a light thrme he is often smart and pointed, as will be sutli- 
ciently illu.sttated iu the exam[)les of his Wit. 

Even ill the expository pa[)ers there are occasional touches of 
pointed expression. In tlie folhiwing we see two forms of ex- 
pression that are very largely used by Johnson : — 

"A mm of a politi- iniac;in:ition is let into a great many pleasnre-i that 
the vuli;ar are not capiilile of reci-ivuig. He can converse, icith a i)icture and 
find an agreeable enia/ianlo?! -in a statue. He meets with a secret refresh- 
ment ill a desciiption, aial iiften J'ccl-i a greater satisfaction in the prospect of 
fields and meadoirs than anutlicr does in the possession." 

Sometimes, but not often, he makes the effort of a careful 
balanced comparison. The following comparison hetween Homer 
and Virgil is from a paper where he e.xhiiiits Homer, Virgil, and 
Ovid as specimens respectively of " what is great, what is beauti- 
ful, and what is new." it is a much simpler comparison than 
either Temple's or Pope's, being more superficial — dealing with 
fewer circumstances; besides, it is less just, the facts being ad- 
apted to suit the author's theory : — 

" Homer is in his province wlien he is describing a battle or a multitude, 
a hero or a god. Virgil is never better yileased than when he is in his 
Elysium or carrying out an eiitert;iining picture. Homer's epithets gener- 
ally mark out what is great, Virgil's what is agreeaMe. Koihing can be 
more magnitlcent than the figure Jupiter makes in tiie first Hind, nor more 
charming than that of Venus in the first j^iieid." [Here the jiassagcs are 
fjuoted.] " Hotiier's persons are most of thcin godlil<e and terrible; Virgil 
lias scarce admitted any into his poem who are not beautiful, and has taken 
particular care to make his hero so — 

And gave his rolling eyps a sparkling prare, 
And breathed a youtlil'ul vigour ou his face. 

In a word, Homer fills his readers with sublime ideas, and, I believe, has 
rained the imagination of all the good poets that liave come after liiin. I 
6had only instance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the first hint of 
any passage in the ' Hiad ' or 'Odyssey,' and ahva3's rises above himself 
when lie has Homer in his view. Viri.'il has diawn together, into his 
'iEneid,' all the jdeasing scenes his subject is capable of admitting; and 
in his ' Georgics,' has given us a collection of tin- most delightlul land- 
scapes that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and swarms 
of bees. " 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity has always been alleged as a great merit of Addison's 
style — '' familiar," says the imperious dictator, " but not coarse." 
" His prose is the model of the middle style ; on grave subjects 



384 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

not formal, on light occasions not grovelling, pure without scrnpu 
losity, and exact without apparent elahoration ; always equable, 
always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addi- 
son never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no 
ambitions ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations." 

To this merit in the expository papers, there are considerable 
drawliacks. I woiUd not insist with De Quincey on his superficial 
treatment of Miltnn and of the Imagination. It is probably but 
a slight exaggcratii)n to say that he was "the man of all that ever 
lived most hostile even to what was good in pedantry, to its 
tendencies towards the profound in erudition, towards minute 
precision, and the non-popular; . . . the champion of all 
that is easy, natural, superficial." And it is but fair to say, 
that if, as he boasted, he brought " I'hilosophy out of closets 
and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assem- 
blies, at tea-tables and coffee-houses," it certainly was Philosophy 
in a very diluted form. But in a periodical such as the ' Specta- 
tor' the superficiality and dilution were not out of place; " att 
instructor like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks, being 
superficial, niiglit be easily understood, and being just, might 
prepare the mind for more attainments." 

Still, it should be possil)le, without going into more abstruse 
considerations, to make such papers as those on the Pleasures of 
the Imagination not only more accurate, but even mure intelligible 
and more easily remembered. 

One great improvement in the way of rendering the papers 
more perspicuous Would be to state explicitly their real char- 
acter ; to lower their pretensions ; to declare them to be not a 
philosophic explanation of festhetic pleasures, but an enumera- 
tion of objects that give jileasnre to the imagination as being 
great, beautiful, or new. Were this done, the reader would go 
on smoothly, — receiving first an account of pleasing objects in 
nature; then in artificial works, gardens, and buildings; then in 
the Fine Arts, statuary, painting, music, poetry, history, natural 
philosophy. Once aware that the jjapers were nothing more 
than a catalogue of things " apt to affect the imagination," the 
reader could pass lightly over the moral reflections and crude 
attempts at deeper explanation, as being but irregular excres- 
cences upon the plan. 

Such, we say, is the real character and value of the papers — 
the divisions become simple (mly when looked upon in this light; 
and had the author consulted the ease and instruction of the 
reader, he would have indicated this at the beginning, and re- 
peated the indication as he went on. But the truth is that he 
did not know their real character — he imagined he was going 
deeper than he really went ; and in perplexing the reader with a 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 385 

futile straining after explanation, he was bat repeating liis own 
perplexity. 

A good deal might be done to make the papers more exacts 
without going deeper into the matter. 

His statements are frequently ambiguous. For example — 

" The prettiest landsca]ie I ever saw was one drawn on tlie walls of a dark 
room, which stood opposite on one side to a navigable river, and on the oUiei 
to a park." 

This gives as good an opening for ingenious conjecture as the 
most involved passages in the ancient classics; a collection of 
such passages would be no mean substitute tor classical discipline 
of the ingenuity. At first sii;ht one wonders how he could see a 
])icture in a dark room, and what the river and the park had to do 
with it. If the ingenious student refer to the context,' he may be 
able to see the meaning without the help of a commentator ; but 
if so, he must be very ingenious indeed. As an example not so 
hopelessly puzzling, but very misleading, take the following open- 
ing of one of the Essays, marking an important transition in the 
subject : — 

" I at first divided the pleasures of the imagination into such as arise from 
objects that are actually belore our eyes, or th:it once enteied in at "ur eyes, 
and are alterwards called up into the mind either barely by its own upera- 
tioMs, or on occasion of something without ns, as strues or descrij)tions. 
We have already considered ttie lirst division, und shall theieloie enter oa 
the other, whicli, lor distinction sake, 1 have called the secondary pleasures 
of tlie imagination." 

The first sentence states the two divisions : let the reader try to 
discover them without reading through the whole pai)er, and the 
chances are that the expression misleads him. Without attempt- 
ing to recast the sentence, which might lead to an irrelevant scru- 
tiny of the division itself, the following modification will make 
the meaning plainer : — 

" I at first divided the pleasures of the imngination into such as arise from 
objects that are actually belure our eyes, and such as arise Jrom objects that, 
once having entered in at our eyes, are afterwards," &.c. 

Another breach of accuracy, too, often committed in these 
papers on the Imagination, is to repeat the same statement in 
a different form as if it were a different statement. Look back 
for an example of this tautology to a pussage quoted among the 
Sentences (p. 382) — "Everything that is new or uncommon," (fee. 
In the first sentence three expressions are identical, and the fourth 
is only slightly differeitt — "new or uncommon raises a pleasure in 
the imagination," " fills the soul with an agreeable surprise," 
"gratifies its curiosity," "gives it an idea of which it was not 

^ Spectator, No. 414. The Essays on tlie Imagination are repriiitcd separately. 



386 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

before posse.\t : " — yet the three last of those expressions are 
given as the explanation of the first. So much confused feeble- 
ness we discover when we take the sentence to jjieces with chari- 
table latitude — "a novelty is agreeiible when it is agreeable." 
Were we to tike the sentence in its grammatical strictness, we 
should find him affirming a more questionable principle — namely, 
thai " every novelty is agreeable." The second sentence in this 
passage is e(iually unfitted for close examination. 

He makes coin|)arativfly litlle use of contrast for the purpose of 
giving; clearness to his views. This makes his pages smoother read- 
iiig for such as are averse to the trouble of close thinking and dis- 
like squareness of form ; but it is no small drawback to persi)icuity. 
At least when he does make a contrast, the form ought to be clear, 
and very often it is not. Thus — 

" By yreatnoss I do not only mean the bulk of any single object, but the 
largeuL'SS of a whole viuw " — 

should be — 

" By greatness I moan not only the bulk of a single object, but the large- 
ness of a wliole view ; " 

or, more perspicuously — 

"I appl}' the term greatness to a whole view as well as to a single object." 

Again — 

"I must confess, after having snrvovcd the nnti(piities about Niqiles and 
Rome, I CMimot but ihiiik tlmt ou;- ailmiiation of them dues not so much arise 
out of (heir (jrcalness as uncoinmoniicss." 

This should be — "Arises not so much from their greatness as 
from their uncommonness." 

Take yet another example of this careless use of the forms of 
contrast — 

"There is as much difference between comprehending a tbonght clothed 
in Cicero's language, and tbat of an or'iJMaiv writer, as between seeing an 
object by the liglit of a taper and tlie liglit of the sua." 

Here the foi:m of the expression implies exactly the opposite of 
what he means. 

Sometimes, from an affectation of polite ease, he does not choose 
the aptest word. Thus — 

"Those who look into Homer are surprised to find liis battles still rising 
one above another, and improvinf/ in horror to the cuncliisiou of the ' Iliad.' 
Milton's fight of the angels is wrought up with the same bcatity." 

Such improprieties are a source of feebleness rather than of con- 
fusion. As a rule, Addison's papers, particularly those on lighter 
themes, are distinguished by the aptness of the phiaseology. The 
chief thing that tcnqits him to err is the study of elegance. 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 387 

Strevglh is not a fe;iture of Addison's prose. lie has neitlr^r 
sulilimity nor vigour : "a model," as Johnson says, "of the middle 
style," "always equable, always easy, without glowing words or 
pointed sentences." 

In the matter of Pathos he is very unlike his warm-hearted 
coadjutor Steele. 

The Ludicrous. — It is upon the witty vein in his writings that 
Addison's fame is durably founded. His eleuaiit satires on the 
manners of his time will be re;id with delight wjjen his grave 
essays are glanced at as productions that made no small noise on 
their first apiiearance, but were too superficial to be permanent. 

He is the great English example of polite ridicule. The jwig- 
nancy of his sarcasm is so disguised and softened by elegance of 
language, ingenuity of wit, and affectation of kindliness, that he is 
often ])ointed out as a crowning instance of amiable humour. The 
error would probably have less often been committed had he not 
been conjoined with Steele, a writer of i;enuinely amiable humour. 
However that may be, it is an error, and one that needs little dis- 
cernment for its discovery. Not a single pajier of Addison's can 
be pointed out that does not contain some stroke of malice — "gay 
malevolence," perhaps, but nevertheless malevolence. The wit and 
polish are exquisite. The satire is usually pointed at classes, and 
not at individuals ; if it is pointed at individuals, they are not real 
personages, but imaginary tyiies of classes. He sometimes afl'ects 
kindliness for the object of his shafts. All these arts keep the 
sufferer out of view, and enable us to enjoy the witty sallies with- 
out scruple. Still, in chaiacterising his humour, the critic must 
not sink the fact that it is at basis malicious — it is "humorous 
satire." If we call it amiable h\miour, we must remember that it 
is a kind of humour that may be amiable to the reader or hearer, 
but is far from appearing amiable to the object. 

In exem[)lifying his satire, we sha'ii follow the order of Criti- 
cism, Politics, and Society. 

In No. 5 of the ' Spectator,' he oi)ens his batteries on the 
scenery and stage-machinery of the opera : — 

"As I was w:i]kiiig in tlie streets about a fortnight ago, I saw an ordinary 
fellow carrying a cage lull of little birds upon his slioulder ; and, as 1 was 
wondering with in^'self wdnit use he would put tiieni to, he was met very 
lui kily by an ai_([U dntiuice, wdm had tlie same curiosity. Upon ids aslxing 
him wliat he had u[Kni his shoulder, he told him that he had been buying 
spai'iows fur the ojiera. 'ISparrows for the opera,' says his Iriend, licking 
his lips, 'what, are they to be roasted?' 'No, no,' says the other, 'they 
are to enter towards the end of the lirst Act, and to tly about the stage.' 
This strange dialogue aw.ikened my cuiio.^ity so far, iliat I immediately 
bought the opera, by \vhi(di means I ]'erceived tiiat the s]iairows were to 
act the ]iart of singmg-liirds in a tlelightful giove; th(>u;L;h upon a neai-er 
eni|uiiy I found the sparrows put the same trick upon the audience tliat Sir 
Martin Mar-all practised upon his mistress; for tliough they Hew in sight. 



3S8 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

tlte mnsin propooded from a consort of fl.ig'olets and binl-ralls which were 
plaiitptl beliind the scenes. . . . Bit to return to the sparrows ; there 
iiave l>cen so ia;niy ttiijlits of them let loose in tliis opera, that it is feared 
tlie liniise will never f;ct rid of th'Mn ; and that in otlier I'lays tliey ni:ike 
tlieir entrance in very inipro"er scenes, so as to be si-eii flyiiit; in a lady's 
bed-chinihei', or perchiniT upon a kiui^'s tlirone; he'^ides the inconvenieuces 
whicli the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer from them." 

Writing of Englisli translations of Italian operas, and malici- 
ously remarking on the blunders of the translators, he says ; — 

"I remember an Italian verse that ran thus word for word — 
And turned my rage into pity ; 
which the En^dish for rhyme sake translated — 

Ami into jiity turned my rage. 

By this means the soft notes that were adapted to ■pity in the Italinn, fell 
upon the word ra'je in tlie English, and the angry soun<ls that were turned 
to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. It 
oftentimes happened likewise, tliat the hncst notes in the air fell upon the 
most insignilicunt words in tlie sentence. I have known the woid and ])nr- 
sned throngh tlie whole gamut, have been enteitained with many a nndo- 
dious the, and have heard the most beautiful graies, quavers, and divisions 
bestowed Upon them, for, and from, to the eternal honour of our English 
particles." 

This exrpiisitely worded criticism is somewliat malicious towards 
the poor singers ami their audience; the satire was no doubt whole- 
some, and the arch satirist could plead the sanction of good sense, 
but there is not much amiability in the spirit of such ridicule. His 
ridicule of the Tory squires is by no means so delicate. He had 
carefully studied the character, with the shar[) insight of inveterate 
dislike, and exposes all the weak jjoints of their rusticity with 
unmerciful exaggeration. One of his first contributions to the 
*Tatler' is an account of a visit paid him in his own apartment by 
Sir Harry Quickset, Sir Giles Wheelbarrow, Knight, 'i'homas Rent- 
free, Estjuire, Justice of the Quorum, Andrew Windmill, Esquire, 
and Mr Nicliolas Doubt, of the Inner 'remplc, Sir Harry's grand- 
son. He had been forewarned of his distinguished company by a 
letter from Sir Harry's steward : — 

"The hour of nine was come this morning, and I had no sooner set chairs, 
by the stcwanl's letter, and tixcd my tea-equi[)age, but I heard a knoik at 
my door, which was opened, but no one entered; after which followed a 
long silence, which was broke at last by, 'Sir, I beg your ))ardon, I think I 
know better; ' and another voice, 'Nay, good Sir Gile.s. ' I looked out from 
my window, ami saw the good company all with their hats olf, and arms 
spread, olfering the door to each other. . . . But they are now got to 
my ( hamberdoor, and I saw my old friend Sir Harry entt-r. I met him 
with all the res[iect due to so reverend a vegetable; lor, 3'ou are to know, 
that is my sense of a person who remains idle in the same place for lialf a 
century. I got him with great success into liis chair by the lire, without 
throwing down any of my cups. ... I had the misfortune, as they stood 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 389 

cbeck by jfiwl, to desire the squire to sit down before the justice of the quo- 
rum, to the no small sjitisfaction of tlie former, and resentTiicnt of the latter." 
[On the squire's refusing to take tea, the steward proposed an adjournment 
to some {lubiie-house. ] " We all stood up in an instant, and Sir Harry filed, 
off from the left, veiy discreetlv, countermarching behind the chairs towards 
the door. After him, Sir Oiles in the same manner. Tlie simple squire 
made a sudden start to follow ; but the justice of the quorum whi])ped 
between upon the stand of the stairs. A maid going up with coals, made 
us halt, and put us into such confusion that we stood all in a heap, witliout 
any visible possibility of recovering our order. . . . We were fixed in 
this perplexity for some time, until we heard a very loud noise in the street; 
and Sir Harry astcing what it was, I, to make them move, said ' it was fire.' 
Upon this, all ran down as fast as they could, without order or ceremony, 
into the street, where we drew up in very good order, and filed off down 
Steer Lane; the impertinent templar driving us before him as in a string, 
and pointing to his acquaintance who passed by." 

Another of his rustic characters in the ' Tatler ' is Tom Bellfrey, 
the fox-huiiter, who gives an imitation of a fox-chase in a London 
drawing-room, and "calls all the neighbouring parishes into the 
square." Tlie most frequently quoted of these caricatuies is the 
"Tory Fox-hunter," drawn with unsparing skill in the 'Free- 
holder.' Upon this character Dr Nathan Drake remarks: — 

"The character of the Tory Fox-hunter is, it must be confessed, in every 
respect less amialde and res])ectable than that of Sir Roger de Coverley ; 
We neither love nor esteem him ; for, instead of the sweet and benevolent 
temper of the knight, we are here presented with a vulgar, rougli, and 
totally uneducated scjuire, whose credulity and absurd prejmlices are not 
softened down or relieved by those mild and tender feelings which so greatly 
endear to us almost every incident in the life of Sir Koger. " 

Yet Addison's share in the character of Sir Roger is really a cari- 
cature of rusticity, not one whit better-natured than the Fox- 
hunter. We shall notice more fully, in treating of Steele, that 
" the sweet and benevolent tem[ier," " the mild and tender feel- 
ings," are Steele's contributions to the character of the knight. 
This is not the only instance where Addison has profited by his 
alliance with Steele. 

His character of Will Wimble is a sharp and considerably over- 
charged satire on the younger sons of the aristocracy. While he 
professes deep compassion that " so good a heart and such busy 
hands were wholly employed in trifles," he exposes those trifling 
occupations with anything but a loving hand. Will "generally 
lives with his elder brother as superiiiiemlent of Ids gavie ;" "is 
extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle 7nan;" 
"is a good-natured, officious fellow;" "carries a tulip-root in his 
pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a 
couple of friends that live perha[)S in the op[)osite sides of the 
country." This is said to be " the case of many a younger brother 
of a great family, who had rather see tijeir children starve like 



390 FROM I7o0 TO 1730. 

gentlemen, than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath 
their quality." To profess compassion after drawing such a picture 
is to add keenness to the sting. 

Of his satires on society, very short exami)Ies must suffice. Any 
of his papers will illustrate the poignancy of the strokes, and the 
exceeding delicacy and ingenuity of the expression. Perhaps the 
most characteristic examples of this vein of his satire are seen in 
his delicate application of caustic to the foil)les of women. He 
was animated by nothing like Steele's chivalrous gallantry to- 
wards the sex. Take the following on the female passion for 
china, his contribution to Steele's short-live I ' Lover ' : — 

"There are no inclinations in women which more surprise me than their 
passions for clialk ami ciiina. The lirst of tliese maladies wears out in 
a little time ; lint wht'n a woman is visited with the second, it generally 
twkes possession of her for life. China vessels are playthings for women of 
all ages. An ohl lady of fourseore shall be as bu>y in cleaning an Indian 
mandarin, as her gn'at-granddiiui,diter is in dressing lier bahy. 

" The common way of purchasing such trilles, if 1 may believe my female 
informers, is hy exchanging old suits of clothes for this brittle ware. The 
potters of L'liina have, it seems, their 'actors at this distance, who retail out 
their several manufactures for cast clotins and su|ierannnated garments. I 
have known an old pcttico it metamorphosed into a punch-bowl, and a pair 
of breeches into a teapot," &c. 

In this example the wit is not quite worthy of Addison, and 
the derision borders on coarseness. As an extreme contrast, take 
a passage from the exquisitely graceful paper on the ' Use of the 
Fan ' :— 

" Women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do 
more execution with them. To tlie end therefore that ladies may be en' ire 
mistresses of the weapon wliicli they bear, 1 have erected an academy for 
the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the 
most fashionable airs and motions tiiat are now practiseil at Court. The 
ladies who carry fans umlcr me are drawn u|i twic e a-day in my great hall, 
where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the fol- 
lowing words of command : — 

Haiiflle your fans. 

Unfurl your fans, 

Discliarj^f your fans. 

Gleam I your tans, 

Recover your fans, 

Flutter your fans. 

By the right observation of these few )dain words of commam?, a woman of 
a tolerat)le genius who will a]>ply herself diligently to her exeicise for the 
space of hut one half-year, shall he able to give her fan all the graces that 
can pos>ibly enter into that little modish machine. 

. . . . "The /'7u/^ riz/jr ()/"<//e i'^nt is the last, and indeed the master- 
piece of the w]u)le exercise ; but if a lady does not misspend her time, she 
may make herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the 
dog-iiiiys and the hot time of the summi'r for the teaching this part of the 
exercise, for as soon as ever I pronounce Flutter your Fans, the jdace is tilled 
with so nnuiy zephyrs and gentle breezes as are very refreshing in that 



JOSEI'H ADDISON. 391 

season of the year, though they niiglit be dangorous to ladies of a tendei 
coiisntutioii in any other. 

"Tlieie is an infinite variety of inotions to he made use of in the Flutter 
of a Fan : there is tlie angry liutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, 
the i-onfiised flutter, the merry flutter, and the iiniorons flitter. Not to be 
tedious, there is scaice any emotion in the mind whicii does not produce a 
suitable agitation in the tan ; insomueh, that if 1 only see the fan of a dis- 
ciplined lady, I know very «ell whether she laughs, frowns, or blu.shes." 

Not content with satirising the ladies of his own generation, he 
carries Lis cynic;il raillery of the sex into imaginary generations 
before the Flood. In his papers on the loves of Shaluui and 
Hilpah, the luimour receives a satirical turn frum the imputation 
of unworthy mo^ves to Hilpah. 

Besides the redeeming graces of exiiression, two things may be 
urged in extenuation of the malicious or satirical busis of Addison's 
wit. First, his ridicule is not personal ; it is aimed at wliat the 
author takes to be vice, folly, or bad taste, not at an actual offender. 
Secondly, "it is justly observed by Tickell that he employed wit 
on the side of virtue and religion." 

Melody. — A good deal of Johnson's panegyric of Addison's st3'le 
is really the picture of an ideal to which, in his opinion, .Addison 
approaches ; but many of the {)articulai-s are liappy, and none more 
so th;in this — that " it was his principal endeavour to avoid all 
harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes ver- 
bose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends 
too much to the language of conversation." The melodious flow 
of the diction is a very striking quality of our author's style; 
and doubtless his endeavour after this beauty accounts for many 
of his sins against precision. In the Appendix to Bain's ' Bhetoric,' 
a passage is analysed with a view to this quality, and it is traced to 
the fewness of abrupt consonants or harsh combinations, the variety 
of the vowels, and " the rhythmical construction, or the alternation 
of long and short, em[)liatic and unemphatic sounds." 

Taste. — Elegance is the ruling quality of Addison's style. He 
sacrifices everything to the unctuous junction of syllables, and the 
harmonious combination of idea.s. The pedantic scholarship of 
Taylor, the rough vigour and profusion of Barrow, are illustraive 
by extreme contrast. But we might go the round of our great 
writers without finding such another example of superficial smooth- 
ness. We have remarked the studied refinement of Temi'le; but 
in Temple refinement is united with majesty and depth of feeling. 
Cowley's diction is studied, and his thoughts light and trivial ; but 
as compared with Addison, his rhythm is often awkward and 
stumbling, his fancy exuberant, and his ridicule bare and un- 
disguised. 

The following is at once an illustration of his elegant treatment 



392 FKOM 1700 TO l730. 

of a theme tint niiLclit easily l)e made pedantir, and an example of 
the principles that guided his own composition : — 

" Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of lij;ht in a dis- 
cour^e, that make everytliiiig about them clear and beautiful. A noble 
metaiihor, when it is pliiced to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round 
it, and darts a lustre through a whole sentence. Tliese differeut kinds of 
allusion are hut so nuiny dilt'erent manners of similitude, and that they may 
please the imagination, the likeness ought to be very exact, or very agree- 
able, as we love to see a picture where tlie resemblance is just, or the posture 
and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this 
respect ; great schohirs are apt to teich their comparisons and allusions from 
the sciences in whicdi they are most conversant, so that a man nuiy see the 
compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent sulycct. I 
have read a discourse upon love which none but a profdnnd < hymist could 
understand, and have heard many a .serr.iou that should only have been 
preached before a congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your men 
of business usually have recoursf? to such instances as are too mean and 
familiar. They are for drawing the reailer into a game of chess or tennis, or 
for leading him from shop to shop, in the cant of particular trades and em- 
ploynu'uts. It is certain there nniy be found an infinite variety of very 
agreeable allusions in both these kinds ; but for the generality, tin; most 
entertaining ones lie in the works of nature, which are obvious to all capa- 
cities, and more delightful than what is to be found in arts and sciences." 

SIR RICHARD STEELE, 1675-1729. 

"Wlien Mr Addison was abroad," writes Thackeray, "and after 
he came home in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in 
his shal)by lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was 
cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend 
of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudliu Walk." Steele, born in 
Dublin, of English parents, was also a Charterhouse boy and an 
Oxonian, his college being ^lerton. A gay, impetuous youth, 
overflowing with wit atid good-nature, and fond of company, he 
yet gained some celebrity as a scholar, and before he graduated 
had written a poem and a comedy. When he had to choose a 
profession he fixed upon the army ; and his friends refusing to 
buy him a commission, he enlisted as a private in the Horse 
Guards. His wit making him a general favourite, he had, by the 
year 1701, been promoted to tlie rank of captain in the Fusiliers. 
He is said to have passed a dissipated and reckless life : he " prob- 
ably wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy, in many 
a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern — fled from many a 
bailiff " ]lut if this debauchery was as bad as has been repre- 
sented, in the midst of it all he kept up his literary tastes. In 
1701 he published 'The Christian Hero,' a curious production for 
a dissi|)ated ofiicer, and an indication of the sinning and repent- 
ing character of the man. In the following year he produced a 
comedy, ' The Funeral, or, Grief k la Mode,' a satire on hired 



SIR rJCIIARD STEELE. 393 

mourners and will making la\vyers. By the death of King William 
he lost his chances of ]>i-onio;ion in the army, and turned all his 
powers to literature and politics. In 1703 appeared liis comedy of 
'The Tender Husband;' in 1704 the 'Lying Lovers,'* a piece too 
tame and moralising to succeed on the stage of those diys. About 
1705, thriiugh the inHuence of his frieiul Addison, he was aj)- 
pointed Gazetteer — "the lowest Minister of State," as he face- 
tiously styled himself. We shall not follow the windings of his 
fortunes clironolo.yically. His literary projects were — ' The Tatler,' 
'The Spectator,' 'The Guardian,' aud 'The Lover,' already men- 
tioned; 'The Englishman' and 'The Crisis,' 1714 (two intense 
political pamphlets, which led to his expulsion from the House 
of Commons); 'The Reader,' 1714, also poliiical, like Addison's 
' Whig Examiner,' an opposition print to the Tory ' Examiner ' ; 
occasional political and anti-Popery tracts; a collection of his 
political writings, 17 15 ; 'The Town-Talk,' 'The Tea-Table,' 'The 
Chit-Chat,' shortlived periodicals, 1716; in 1719 'The Plebeian,' 
which was opposed by Addison in the 'Old Whig,' and produced 
a quarrel between the two friends; 'The Theatre,' a periodical, 
1719-20, under the feigned name of Sir John Edgar; 'The Con- 
scious Lovers,' his best comedy, 1722. His Government ii]»point- 
ments were, after the Gazetteership, Ciminiissionershi[) of Stamps, 
17 10; Surveyorship of the P>oyal St;ibles at Hampton Court, and 
Governorship of the Royal Company of Comedians, 1715; Com- 
missionership of Forfeited Estates in Scotland, 17 17. 

His personal appearance would seem to have been rather un- 
favourable. The satirical j)ortrait by John Dennis is said by 
Tljackeray to bear "a dreadful resemblance" to the original — 

" Sir John Edgar, of the county of , in Ireland, is of a middle 

stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of 
somebody over a farmer's chimney — a short chin, a short nose, a 
short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance." 

As we may judge from this picture, he possessed great bodily 
energy, and his constitutional vigour supported him in the heartiest 
enjoyment of life. Living in a whirl of social dissi[)ation, he yet, 
as Gazetteer, as editor of periodicals, and in other oflices, went 
through a great deal of worrying business ; and in the hurry of 
his active life was constantly snatching moments to despatch little 
notes to his "dearest Prue." Of these affectionate billets, Mrs 
Steele preserved no less than 400, 

His intellect was of a roui;her cast than his friend's. It is the 
emotional character of the man that renders him interesting, and 
entitles him to a good secondary place among our great writers of 
piose. Probably a large fraction of his energy was spent in the 
rollicking enjoyment of existence ; otherwise his rank would have 
been higher than it is. His contributions to the 'Spectator' and 



394 FKOM 1700 TO 1730. 

allied periodicals take tlieir distinction from his prevailing tender- 
ness of heart and wide acquaintance with human life. To him 
these papers owe their patlm.s, their humour, and their extraordi- 
nary variety, of characters. He loved company, and the quickne.*^ 
of liis sympathies made liim constantly alive to dilltiences iu the 
personalities of his companions. 

His habits were irreguhir ; he had not the familiar routine and 
select circle of Addison. He was under no necessity of economis- 
in<;- his energies; he seems to have lieen capable of bearing prac- 
tically any amount of work and dissipation. He had small power 
of resisting the impulses of emotion. His plans for the day were 
easily disconcerted by the entrance of a good companion. In 
politics, when any of his darling principles seemed to 1)6 iu danger, 
he rushed to the rescue without regard to consequences. 

In this place we shall remark upon and exemplify chiefly his 
pathos and his humour. His characters are really artistic creations, 
and belong to poetry and fiction. 

On the other qualities of his style we remark cursorily. In 
command of words he is not equal to Addison ; his choice is much 
less felicitous. His sentence composition is irregular and careless, 
often ungrammatical : writing in the character of a Tatler, lie 
thought it incumbent to assume "incorrectness of style, and an 
air of common speech " — a style very agreeable to his own in- 
clinations. He has not the polished and felicitous melody of 
Addison. His language and sentiments are much more glowing 
and extravagant; his papers may be distinguished by this feature 
alone. 

The chief differences lietween his own style and Addison's are 
well sumnifd up by himself — "The elegance, purity, and correct- 
ness in his writings were nnt so much my purpose as, in any in- 
telligible manner as I could, to rally all those singularities of 
human life, through the diftVrent professions and characters in 
it, which obstruct anything that was truly good and great." 

Pathos. — Steele is one of the mnst tonching of our writers. 
Himself of a nature the reverse of melancholy, he yet at certain 
seasons "resolved to be sorrowful"; and when the sorrowful 
mood was upon him, the incidents that he recalled or iinagimd 
were of the most heartrending character. The kind of pathos 
that we find in him would not be pathetic at all, in a poetic 
sense, to the more delicate order of sensibilities: it would be a 
pain, and not an aisthetic pleasure. 1'here are not many of these 
artccting papers in either 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' or 'Guardian.' 
ilost of those that do appeal to our tender sensibilities lay before 
us situations of extreme anguish. We shall quote two examples, 
in which the extreme painfulness of the incidents is relieved only 



SIR RICHARD STEELE. 395 

by the exhibition of extreme devotedness. The first is the story 
of Unnion and Valentine (' Tatler,' No. 5) : — 

"At the sie<,'e of Nnnmr by the Allies, tlieie were in the raiil^s, of the 
company f.omniandeil by Cajitain Piiicent, in Colonel Frcdiiick Hamilton's 
rf!:;iiiient, one Uimion, a coi{)oial, and one Valentine, a private centinel ; 
tlieie h:i]ipened between these two men a disjmte about a matter of love, 
which, upon some acrijravations, grew to an irreconcileable hatred. Unnion, 
being the oflirer of Valentine, took all ojijioitunities even to strike his rival, 
and profess the spite and revenge whieli moved him to it. The centinel ii(ire 
it wiihuut resistance, but frequently said he would die to be revenged of tliat 
tyrant. They had spent whole months thus, one injuring, the otlier com- 
jilaining; when, in the midst of this rage towards each other, they were 
commanded upon the attack of the castle, wliere the corporal received a shot 
in the thigh, and I'ell ; the French pressing on, and he ex[iecting to be 
trampled to deatli, called out to his enemy, 'Ah, Valentine! can you leave 
nie here?' Valentine innnediately ran back, and in the midst of a thick 
lire of the French, took the corporal upon Ids back, and brought liim 
through all that danger, as far as the abbey of Salsine, where a cannon-ball 
took olf his head : liis body fell under his enemy whom lie was carrying off. 
Unnion immediately forgot liis wound, rose up, tearing his hair, and then 
tlirew himself upon the bleeding circase, crying, 'Ah, Valentine! was it 
f.ir me, who liave so barbarously used tliee, that thou hast died ? I will not 
live afier thee ! ' He was not liy any means to be forced from the body, but 
was removed with it bleeding in his arms, and attended with tears by all 
their comrades wlio knew their enmity. Wiien he was brought to a tent, 
liis wounds were dressed by force; but the next day, still calling upon 
Valentine, and lamenting his cruelties to him, he died in the pangs of re- 
morse and despair." 

This story is given " in order to inspire the love and admiration 
of worthy actions," and "as an instance of the greatness of spirit 
in the lowest of her Majesty's subjects." The next is a deathbed 
scene, from an account uf a family where Mr Bickerstaft' was very 
intimate (' Tatler,' Nos. 95, 114) : — 

" I went up directly to the room where she lay, and was met at the 
entrance by my Iriend, who, notwitlistanding his thoughts had been com- 
jtosed a little before, at the si.uht of me tuined away liis face and wept. 
The little family of children renewed their exi»ressions of their sorrow ac- 
cording to their several ages and degrees of understanding. The eldest 
daughter was in tears, busied in attendance upon her mother ; others were 
kneeling about the bedside ; and what troubled me most was, to see a little 
boy, who was too young to know the reason, weeping oidj' because liis 
sisters did. The only one iu the room who seemed resigned and comforled 
was the dying person. At my approach to the bedside, she told me, with a 
low broken voice, 'This is kindly done. Take care of your friend — do not 
go from him.' She had before taken leave of her husband and chihlren, in 
a manner ]iroiier for so solemn a parting, and with a gracefulness peculiar 
to a woman of her character. JVly heart was torn in pieces, to see the hus- 
band on one side sujipressing and kee[)ing down the swellings of Ids grief, 
lor fear of disturbing her in her last inomeiits ; and the wile, even at that 
time, concealing the pains slie endured, for fear of increasing his affliction. 
She kept her eyes upon him for some monients after she grew speechless, 
and soon .Iter closed them for ever. In the moment of her departure, my 



396 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

friend, who ha<l thus far commanded himself, gave a dacp groan, and fell 
into a swoon by her bedside." 

We have evidence that Steele himself was overpowered by the 
painfulness of his own creations. It is said that after writing the 
above deatlibed scene he was so affected as to be unable to pro- 
ceed : the commonplace consolations that follow in the original 
are said to have been appended by Addison. Sometimes he seeks 
relief from his painful recollections or imaginations by violent 
exi)edients. In one paper a most touching soliloquy is interrupted 
by a knock at the door, and the arrival of a hamper of wine; 
whereupon he sends for tliree of his friends, and restores himself 
to cheerfulness by the generous warmth of two bottles. In another 
be works upon his reader's feelings till they reach the point of 
agony, and then suddenly transfers the horrible scene to dream- 
land : — 

"I was once m3'S{'lf in agonies of grief tliat are iinutteraWe, and in so 
great a distiadion of mind, that I thought iiiysclf even out of tlie jjossibility 
of receiving comfort. The occasion was as follows. When 1 was a youth 
in a part of the army which was then quartered at Dover, I lell in love with 
an agreeable young woman of a good lauiil)- in those ]iarts, and hail tiie 
satisfaction of seeing my aildressis kindly received, which occasioned the 
perplexity I am goiu'^ to relate. 

" We were in a calm evening diveiting ourselves upon the top of the cliff 
with the prospect of the sea, and trilling away the time in such little fond- 
nesses as are most ridiculous to persons in busiuess, and most agreeable to 
those in love. 

" In the midst of these our innocent endearments, she snatched a paper 
of verses out of my hand, and ran away witii tljem. 1 was following her; 
when on a sudden the ground, though at a con->iderable distance from the 
verge of the precipice, sank under her, and threw her down from so pro- 
digious a height, uj)on sucii a range of rocks, as wouM have dashed her into 
ten thousand jiieces, had her body been made of adamant. It is much easier 
for my reader to imagine my state of mind upon such an occasion than (or 
jne to e-xjuess it. I said to myself, It is not in the power of Heaven to re- 
lieve me ! ivhen I aicakrd, cqua/.bi Iransiiorlcd and aslunished, to see mijself 
drawn out of an nJ/Uction which, tlie very moment before, appeared to me al- 
togellier inextricable. " 

The Ludicrous. — Steele's humour is distinguished from Addison's 
chiefly by two circumstances — unaffected geniality and heartiness, 
and less delicate elaboration. 

Steele was a kindly observer of human frailties. Against what 
he considered to be heartlessness and vice he was openly indignant : 
his natural tendency was to use the lash freely in hot blood — not 
to introduce galling ])oints of satire with a smiling countenance. 
Minor faults, affectation, presumption, a dictatorial manner, and 
suchlike, he ridiculed with good-humour, with a certain fellow- 
feeling for the objects of his ridicule. 

At the same time, he had not enough patient skill to work out 



SIR KICHARD STEELE, 307 

a ludicrous conception into the exquisite details that give such a 
charm to the papers of Addison. By coni[)arisou with his coad- 
jutor, he is sketchy and declamatory. 

It is not difficult to find illustrations of both of these points. 
In several cases Addison has taken up Steele's conceiition, and 
■worked it out with more elaborate skill, at the same time turning 
it into a more slyly malicious, or at least a colder, vein. 

For example, we Lave quoted (p. 390) Addison's exquisite paper 
on the use of the Fan. Let us luok now at the original coiicei)tion 
in the ' Tatler.' The "beauteous Delamira" being about to be 
married, the "matchless Virgulta" beseeches her to tell the secret 
of her manner of charming : — 

" Delamira heard her with great attention, and with that dexterity which 
is natural to litT, told her that 'all she had aliove the rest of her sex and 
coiiti-iiiporary beanties was wliolly owing to a fan (that was left her by her 
mother, and had been long in the family), which, wiioever had in pusses- 
sion, and used with skill, should command the iitarts of all belmldcrs ; and 
since,' said she, smiling, '1 have no nioie to do with extentling my c(jn- 
qnests or triumphs, I will make you a present of this inestimable rarity.' 
Virgulta made lier expressions of the highest gratitude for so uncommon a 
confidence in her, and begged she would 'show lier what was iiecnliar in the 
management of that utensd, which rendered it of such general furce while 
she was mistress of it.'- Delamira replied, 'You see, madam, Cupid is the 
princijial figure jiainted on it ; ami the skill in playing this fan is, in your 
several motions of it, to let him appear as little as possible ; for honourable 
lovei-s fly all endeavours to ensnare them ; and your Cupid must hide his 
bow anil arrow, or he will never be sure of his game. Yon may observe,' 
continued she, 'that in all public assemblies, tlie sexes seem to sepaiate 
themselves, and draw up to attack each other with eye-shot : that is the 
time when the fan, which is all the armour of a wiJinaii, is of most use in 
our defence ; for our minds are construed by the waving of that little iustiu- 
ment, and our thoughts appear in composure or agitation, according to the 
motion of it. . . . Cymon, who is the dullest of mortals, and though a 
wonderful great scholar, does not only pause, but seems to take a naji with 
his eyes open between every other sentence in his discourse: him have I 
made a leader in assemblies ; and one blow on the shmiider as I passed by 
him has rai^ed him to a downright impertinent in all conveisations. The 
airy Will Sampler is become as lethargic by this my wand, as Cymon is 
sprightly. Take it, good girl, and use it without meicy. '" 

Compare this with Addison's railing proposal to teach the use 
of the fan, and his elaborate ex])osure of all the arts. A gallant 
tenderness for the sex shines through " good-hearted Dick's" mock- 
heroic humour. Addison politely holds the sex up to ridicule ; 
Steele sympathises with their little artifices, and even insinuates 
a piece of genuine good advice as to the best means of success. 

As another field for comparison, take their sketches of Clubs. 
None of Addison's Clubs have the rollicking humour of the Ugly 
Club, and none of Steele's have the mean and soidid insinuations 
contained in the rules of the Twopenny Club. On the other hand, 



3U8 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

even the Ugly Club, which was a favourite conoeption,'' is far from 
having the minute fiaLsh of the Everladinr/ Club. 

Tiie difference between the humour of the two writers is nowhere 
more conspicuous thau in the papers upon Sir Roger de Coverluy. 
Steele's Sir Roger is quite a different person from Addison's Sir 
Roger. All that is amiable in the conceptinn belongs to Steele. 
His first paper (' Spectator,' No. 2) re|)resents Sir Roger as a jolly 
country gentleman, "keeping a good house both in town and coun- 
try ;" a lover of mankind, with such a mirthful cast in his behav- 
iour, that he is beloved ratiier than esteemed; uncondned to modes 
and forms, disregarding the manners of the world when he thinks 
them in the wrong; when he enters a house, calling the servants 
by their names, and talking all the way up-stairs to a visit. He 
had been a man of fashion in his youth, but being crossed in love 
by a beautiful w^idow, had grown careless of his person, and never 
dressed afterwards. Steele's su'osequent papers, Nos. 6, 107, 109, 
113, 118, 174, bear out this description— give examples of his 
common-sense, of his considerate treatment of his servants, of his 
gratitude to one of them for saving his life, an 1 of his occasional 
singularities of behaviour. The knight is made to explain his own 
eccentricities as a result of his love disappointment — " Between 
you and me," he says, " I am often apt to imagine it has had some 
whimsical effect upon my brain, for I frequently find that, in my 
most serious discourse, I let fall some comical familiarity of speech 
or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh." Such is Sir Roger 
according to Steele — an easy, good-natured gentleman, of good 
sense, purposely setting at nought the conventions of fashion, sin- 
gular and eccentric, but aware of his eccentricities. In Addison's 
hands he becomes a very different character. He is transformed 
into a good-natured Tory fox-hunter. He retains the goo 1-nature 
and the eccentricity ; he drops, except in name, the good sense, 
and the fanuliar knowledge of town life. Addison makes him 
a thorough rustic; autocratic, self-important, ignorant, credulous. 
True, he is at great ]iains to repeat that, Sir Roger was much 
esteemed for his universal benevolence — "at peace within himself, 

1 The Ugly flub, and the difficulties met with in finding members, form one 
of tlif l)est s|ieciiuens of Steele's rollicking liuniour. In giving an account of it, 
he tn;ikes tlie following humorous confession in the pei-son of tlie ISp'-ctator: 
" For my own part, I am a little unhappy in the mouid ol my face, winch is not 
quite so long as it is broad. Whether this might not partly arise from my opeu- 
iug my month mucli seldomer than other penplc, and by consequence not so 
much lengtliening the fibres of my visage, I am not at leisure to determine. 
However it be, 1 have been often put out of countenance liy the shortness of 
my face, and was Ibi-mcrly at great pains in concealing it by wearing a periwig 
with a high foretop, and lettii g my beard grow, liut now I liave thoroughly 
got over the delicacy, and could be contcided were it mucli shorter, ]u-ovided it 
DUj-dit <|ualify me for a meml^r of the Merry Club, which the following letter 
gives me an account of." 



SIk RICHAKD STEELE. 399 

anrl esteemed ' by all about him." But this affectation of respect 
for the knight is a sly iirtitice to bring him into ridiculous situa- 
tions Ko. io6, the first of Addison's i'a[iers, is the most unliable 
jiai't of the picture, and seems designed to let Steele's conception 
down softly. Yet even this {)aper .vhuws Sii' lioger in a ridiculous 
lig it, inconsistent with the following paper, No. 107, by Steele. 
Both knight and servants are pleasantly caricatured in No. 106 — 
"You Would take liis valet de ckavibre for his brother, his butler is 
grey-headed, his groom is one of the gnvest men that I have ever 
Seen, and his cnachmaii has the looks of a privy councillor." His 
chaiilaiu was clmsen for his "good aspect, clear voice, and social'le 
temper": "at his first settling with me," says Sir Boger, "I made 
him a present of all the g^ od sermons which have been printed in 
English, an I only begged of him that every Sunday he would pro- 
nounce one of them in the pulpit." Among these venerable domes- 
tics thf good knight is treated like an infant. " When he is pleasant 
upon a.jy of them, all his fami y are in good humour, and none so 
much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary, 
if he coughs or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a 
stander-by to observe a seciet ccmcem in the looks of all his ser- 
vants." After this opening sketch of Sir Roger's good-nature, we 
are presented with some exquisitely-wrought pictures of his ridic- 
ulous doings. He exorcises the shut-up rooms of his house, by 
making the chaplain sleep in them. In church "he suffers nobody 
to sleep besides himself ; for if by chance he has been surprised 
into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up 
and looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either 
Wakes them himself, or sends his servant to them ;" he lengthens 
out a verse half a minute after the rest of the congregation, says 
Amen three or four times, and cab's out to John Matthews to mind 
what he is about, and not disturb the congregation. He had been 
a great fox-hunter in his youth. He would have given over Moll 
White, the witch, to the County Assizes, had he not been dissuaded 
by the chaplain. Perhaps the most exquisitely ludicrous of his 
adventures are his journey to the Assizes, and his speech there 
(No. 122); his visit to Westminster Abliey (329); his observations 
t)n " The Distressed Mother," in the playhouse : in all these situa- 
tions he is merely a gnod-natured, credulous, unsophisticated butt 
for the delicate ridicule of his companion the Spectator. 

While there is such a difference between the conceptions of the 
two writers, there is a still greater difference in the execution. In 

1 Esteemed. — Steele had said that Sir Roger was rather beloved than esteemed. 
But this was estinintini; tlie knight by the standard of his town trends. Addi- 
son places him entirely in tlie countiy, and represents him as an olject of great 
admiration aud res])eet to the simple country-people, thereby getting a do ubl» 
graliticaliou lor his couteuipt of the country or Tory party. 



400 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

point of literary skill, any one of Addison's ]iapers is worth all 
Steele's ])ut tni^etlier. Steele is sketchy and rude, and mars the 
portraiture with patches of moralising. Addison fills in tlie minute 
toucliea with his most exquisite skill. ^ 

OTHER WRITERa 

THEOLOGY. 

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Cliurch of Eng- 
land began to rest from her labours against Pajiacy, and to turn 
her forces again.st a new enemy. A new topic engaged all clergy- 
men of a literary and controversial disposition, and the general 
tone of their sermons underwent a ciirrespnnding change. For 
such changes one cannot assign a definite year ; it takes time to 
give a new direction to the energies of a large bo ly of diderent 
men. We ninst be content to say that a religious revolution took 
place during the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning 
of the eighteenth. If we di[) into the writings of Churchmen 
twenty years before the end of the century, we find their polemic 
tracts burning with zeal against Papacy, and their sermons ad- 
ministering the consolations and warnings of Christianity, in full 
assurance of its divine origin. Twenty years after the end of the 
century we breathe a different atmosphere. The Church was then 
on the alert against a new antagonist — the all-absorbing topic was 
the controversy with the Deists. Tracts poured from the press; 
young aspirants to the bench were eager to break a lance with 
Toland or with Collins. Sermons were largely influenced by the 
prevailing controversy. Devotional ardour was rejilaced by polem- 
ical ardour, by a desire to "prove the reasonableness" of Christi- 
anity. Whatever was the preacher's text, his anxiety was to 
"prove" thiit it was eminently suited to the condition of men, 
eminently calculated to make them happy. Sublimity and pathos 
were banished fr 'm the puljiit, and argument reigned in their stead. 
The great majority of the sermons preached in the eighteenth cen- 
tury were " tedious moral essays " : their favourite exhortations 

1 It is an example of the injustice done to Steele by the admirers of Addison, 
and also ot tlie want of (iisciiiiiination in their liomage, that tliey give Adilisoa 
credit for the amiability of the character as well as for the skill of the portiait- 
ure. There can be no doubt that, in this as in otluir cases, Addison prohted 
greatly by his alliance with Steele ; the orijrinal snggestiveness of discursive 
" Dick " gave many a iiint for the elaborating skill of his frieml. The laiiorious 
Dr Drake thinks it a subject for regret tiiat Steele's first draughts do not com- 
bine better with Adilison's full and accurate picture ; condescends to say that 
Nos. 107 and 109 "carry on the C' stiinie and design of Addison with undeviat- 
ing felicity" ; and thinks it "an incjeninufi conjecture of Dr Aikin, that Addison 
intended, through the ruedium of Sir Roger's weakness, to convey an indirect 
satire on the coutined notions and political prejudices of the country geutleuian" I 



THEOLOGY. 401 

were "to abstain from vice, to cultivate virtue, to fill our station 
in life with j)rj)priety, to bear the ills of life with resiguatit)n, and 
to use its pleasures moderately," 

Not a few of the theologians of this period might be grouped 
together as taking part in the trial of the Bible by common reason. 
Towards the end of the seventeenth century rationalism was pre- 
dominant among learned students of religion, whether in the 
Church or out of it. By nearly all theologians it seemed taken 
for granted that tlie Bible was not to be received without question 
as the authoritative word of Uod, but was to be tried by its agree- 
ment with reason. Some acce|)ted these evidences, some did not; 
orthodoxy was sharply assailed by heterodoxy, and issued numerous 
sharp replies. The controversy did nothing ap])reciable for the 
advancement of English style. None of the combatants could be 
called great masters of language.^ 

The three most distinguished Chunhmen of this generation, 
Atterbury, floadley, and Clarke, did not win their reputation in 
tht; war against the Deists. Atterbury is known chiefly as a 
jiolitician ; Uoailley by his views regarding Church and State; 
Claiko as a scholar, and a writer on Natural Theology and Kthics, 
In literary pow er they are much inferior to the three great divines 
of the ]ireceding age, l]arrow, 'i'illotson, and South. 

Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), Bishop of Bochester, was an 
uncompromising champion of the High Church and Tory | arty. 
The son of a rector in Buckinghamshire, he was sent to Westminster 
School and to Christ Church. As a scholar, he was, according to 
ilacaulay, more brilliant than profound. He took part in the 
celebrated " B)attle of the Books." He was tutor to Charles Boyle, 
the editor of ' Phalaris,' and is generally understood to have written 
the re[)ly to Bentley's first short criticism of the Letters (1694). 
He distinguished himself greatly in 1700 by supporting the High 
Church view of the jjowers of the Lower House of Convocation. 
He is supposed to have borne a chief part in framing the s[)eech 
pronounced by Sacheverell at the bar of the House of Lords. 
When the Tories rose into power, he was made Dean of Christ 
Chiu'ch, and afterwards Bishop of Bochester. After the accession 
of George, he was suspected of intriguing with the Pretender, and 
formally banished in 1723. He died in France. He was a bold, 
turbulent man, having an ambition that would not rest short of 
the highest power; eloquent, a dazzling master of controversial 
fence ; so audacious in his statements and clever in his personali- 
ties, that on two occasions he vanquished his superiors in learning, 
and made the worse appear the better reason. " Such arguments 

1 Tlie best succinct accmint of tlie religious thought of this generation and tho 
following is contained in Mr Marl; Pattison's "Tendencies of lieligious Thouidit 
ill England, i6b8-i750," one of tlie ' Essays and Reviews.' 

2 C 



402 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

as lie had he plared in tlie clearest light. Where he had no arcfu- 
nients, he rosorted to personalities, soinctimes serious, generally 
ludicrous, always clever and cutting. But whether he was grave 
or inerry, wliether he reasoned or sneered, his style was always 
pure, polished, and easy." His diction is not quite so pure ;i3 
Swift's or Addison's ; and it is easy in the sense of fluent and 
racy, not in the sense of languid. 

Benjamin Hoadley or Hoadly (1676-1761), successively Bishop 
of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, wrote of/'tiiist the 
pietensions of Higli Churchmen and Tories. On more than one 
occasion he crossed swords with Atterbury. His most famous 
work was a sermon preached before George I. soon after his eleva^- 
lion to the bench, on the ' Nature of the Kingdom of Christ.' The 
text — "My kingdom is not of this world" — was a good clue to 
the contents, lie strongly advocated the subordination of the 
Church to the Stata 'j'he sermon made a great sensatinu. It 
drew upon the author a formal cflnsure from the Lower House of 
Convocation, whose independent privileges had been maintained 
by Atterbury ; and it originated what is known as the Bai:gorian 
controversy, an engagement of some forty or fifty pam[)hlets. His 
collected works occupy three volumes, published by his son in 
1773. ^^'■'^ style is iu general vigorous and caustic ; he seems care- 
less of elegance, and his dry sarcasms have lost their interest. 

The other eminent divine of the period is Dr Samuel Clarke 
(1675-1729), the pupil and friend of Newton. As a scholar, he 
ti-anslated Bioiiault's 'Physics' into Engli.sh, Newton's 'Optics' 
into Latin, edited C;t!sar's 'Conmicntaries,' and published the 
first twelve books of the ' Hiad ' with a Latin version. As a theo- 
logian, he is known chiefly by an illusory attempt to give a mathe- 
matical demonstration of the existence of God. which he undertook 
upon the suggestion of Sir Isaac Newton. In the Boyle Lectures 
(1704-5) he promulgated an ethical system whose chief proposition 
is that goodness and virtue consist in the observance of certain 
" eternal fitnesses." In 17 15 he joined Newti'n in a famous con- 
troversy with Leibnitz, who had represented the Newtonian phil- 
osophy as both false and subversive of religion. His views on 
the Trinity and on some other points hindeied his advancement in 
the Church. As regards style, Clarke's sermons may almost be 
Said to have been the nu-dels of the Scotch "moderate" school of 
preachers — heavy, prolix, argumentative, full of practical good 
sense, and jxissessing none of the ardour familiar to us under the 
name "Evangelical" 

The leading " Deists " (so-called) were Toland, Collins, Wool- 
Bton, and Tindal. With these might be reckoned Shaftesbury: 
only he, from his rank (as Mr Battisou thinks), was refuted 



THEOLOGY. 403 

with less warmth, and had not the same notoriety as a con- 
troversialist. 

John Toland (1669-1722) was born nenr Londonderry, of Catho- 
lic ])arents, took a degree at Glasgow, and studied afterwards at 
Leyden and Oxford, Jrlis 'Christianity not ]\Iysteriou.s,' 1696, 
caused none the less excitement that its quarrel with orthodoxy 
was chiefly concerning the word "mysterious." He accejite I tlie 
Bible theory of the origin of sin, only labouring to mak« out that 
there was nothing mysterious about it. He did not re[iudiate 
miracles; he only held that there was nothing mysterious in an 
all-powerful Bi ing breaking through the order of nature. Pro- 
fessor Ferrier styles him " l>ut a poor writer," and charges him 
with "dulness, i)edantry, vanity, and indiscretion." 

Anthony Collins (1676-1729), a gentleman of independent for- 
tune, with an Eton and Cambridge education, and the training of 
a barrister, an esteemed young friend of Locke's, wrote several 
works that engaged him in controversy with the most eminent 
divines of the time. In 1707 he discussed the value of testimony, 
making polemical capital out of the 30,000 doubtful readings that 
Dr John Mill had set down in his edition of the New Testament. 
In 17 10, in a 'Vindication of the Divine Attributes,' he contended 
that predestination is incompatible with "freedom" of the human 
will, and that the will is not "free." In 17 13 his 'Discourse on 
Free Thinking' claimed unlimited permission to discuss the prob- 
lems of religion. In 1724 a])[)eared his most notorious work — 
' Discourse on the Grounds and I'easons of the Christian Beligion ' ; 
this publication was rejilicd to by all the talent of the Church. 
" The moral character of this writer stands extremely high for 
temperance, humanity, and benevolence; and both as a magistrate 
and a man he accpiired general esteem." Though not orthodox, 
he was religious ; he declared on his deathbed that he had endea- 
voured to serve both God and his country. His style is simple, 
clear, and concise ; he has none of the iconoclastic violence of 
other objectors to established faith. 

In 1726, amid the storm of hostile criticism, there appeared on 
the side of Collins a Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate. 
This was Thomas "Woolston (1669-1733), Fellow and Tutor of 
Sidney Su.ssex, Cambridga Woolston had long made theology 
his favourite study, but till more than fifty had shown no symp- 
toms of acute heterodoxy. He had indeed taken up Crigen's 
view of the Old Testament as a spiritual allegory, and in 1723 
had made acrimonious attacks on the clergy. But now he pushed 
the idea of allegory into the New Testament, maintaining that the 
miracles also were fictitious allegories. In the four following 
years, in 'Six Discourses on the JMiracles of Christ,' he assailed 
the gospel narrative with ridicule. He also issued some ironical 



404 I'lIOM 1700 TO 1730. 

defences of Christian tenets. His manner was offensive ; he was 
prosecuted for blasphemy, fined, and imprisoned. 

In the list year of this period, 1730, Matthew Tindal ("1657- 
1733), a Fellow of All Souls, published a dialogue, 'Christianity 
as old as the Cri.ation, or the Gospel a repul'licatiou of the lle- 
liuion of Nature.' This is perhaps the mo>t elaborate of the 
deistical works of the period. The author hoi iS the startling 
doctrine that Christianity is useless where it is not mischievous; 
that man has always been able to distinguish right ami wrong 
with regiird to his special circumstances; and that to lay dowji a 
system of general rules is certain to conduct to error. 

The Deists were opposed by the whole force of the clergy, as 
well as by a considerable number of laymen. Among those that 
more particulaily distinguished themselves — apart from such 
chamjiions as Iloadlcy, Clarke, and Bentley, who achieved dis- 
tinctiou in other fields — may be mentioned Charles Leslie (1650- 
1722), author of a famous work piovoked chieHy by Toland, en- 
titled 'Short and Easy Method with the Deists'; John Norris 
(1657-1711), rector of IJemerton, one of the earliest critics of Lorke, 
who icplied to Tolaud's 'Christianity not Mysterious'; Peter 
Brown, Ihshop of Cork, also a critic of Locke and Toland; 
Edward Chandler (d. 1730), I'ishop of Lichfield, who in 1725 
wrote a ' Defence of Christianity' against Collins; Thomas Sher- 
lock (1678-1761), Lishop of London, who wrote a 'Trial of the 
Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus' in reply to Woolston. 
But the most al)le apologists belong to our next period ; they 
came forward to repel the assault made by Tindal. The fight 
began to rage hotly about 1720, after the subsidence of the Lan- 
gorian controversy ; I'indal's work was the culminating charge, 
after which the battle became fainter. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) is famed as the atithor of 
'The Fable of the Bees, or private Vices pid)lic Benefits.' ^ "This 
work is a sutire upon artificial society, having for its chief aim to 
expose the hnllowness of the so-called dignity of human nature." 
He endeavours with cynical humour to explain away all alleged 
cases t)f disinterested conduct. He regards pride and vanity as 

1 The received liililiogra]iliy of tins Fable is inaccurate. It appeared originally 
in 1705 (not ill 1714, the received date), as a small sixjH-nny ]inni]>lilet of ilogserel 
verses, entitled ' Tiie (iruiMhl n? Hive; or Knaves turned Honest.' Soon alter, 
it was pirated, and hawked alioiU tlie streets in a haltpeiiny sheet. In 1714 the 
autlior re|iiil>lishecl it wiili some two liundrcd small j)ages of remarks, and an 
' KnqMiry Into tiie Oriirin of Moral Virtue :'— the whole under tlie title— 'The 
Faille of the Hees, or private Vice.s })uhlic Benefits.' In 1723 the woik was en- 
tir. ly recast, but the title, ' The Fable of the Bees,' was not then given to it for 
the lirst time. 



PHILOSOPHY. 405 

the chief incentives that delude men into what is called public 
spirit. His humour is the coarsest of the coarse ; but he cannot 
be denied great wit, happy expression, and ingenious illustrations. 
A happy saying of his stuck to Addison — "a parson in a tye-wig"; 
which has much the same force as our familiar "a policeman in plain 
clothes," the tye-wig being unclerical in the reign of Queen Anne. 

William WoUaston (1659-1724), a clergyman, was bequeathed 
an ample fortune when he was about thirty, settled in London, 
and passed a life of study — so very regular that he is said not to 
have slept out of his own house for thirty years. Eoused, like 
Clarke, by the ethics of Hobbes, he wrote a treatise entitled * The 
Religion of Nature Delineated.' His ethical system is at bottom 
the same with Clarke's, tliough differently expressed. According 
to him, immorality consists in the violation of truth, truth con- 
sisting in the observance of certain eternally fixed relations be- 
tween man and man and between man and God. 

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, grandson 
of the first Earl (" Achitophel ") (1671-1713), made a considerable 
reputation as an ethical writer. He was for a few years in Parlia- 
ment, but the greater part of his life was spent in study. His 
works are, — ' Inquiry concerning Virtue' (i6gg); 'Letter on En- 
thusiasm' (170S); 'Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody' — a 
Platonic vindication of Deity and Providence, highly praised by 
Leibnitz (1709) ; ' Essay upon the Freedom of Wit and Humour' 
— advocating the trial of religious as well as other doctrines by 
the test of ridicule (also 1709); 'Advice to an Author' (17 10). 
The title of his collected works, excluding the ' Inquiry,' which 
contains his ethical theories, is ' Characteristics of Men, Manners, 
Opinions, and Times.' He was a man of feeble constitution, but 
cheerful and witty. His ethical speculations show no great power 
of analysis. He may be called the first of the intuitional school, 
writing without being at all aware of the difficulties of his position. 
Cudworth had been alarmed at the attempt of Hobbes to restrict 
the term moral to actions commanded by a supreme power ; 
Shaftesbury disliked Locke's theory that our ideas of morality are 
gnt by refiection upon our experience. He calls himself a Moral 
Iiealist; and holds not only that the distinctions between virtue 
and vice are " real," but that we have a special moral sense, where- 
by we distinguish what is virtuous and what is vicious. Into the 
origin of this sense he does not profess to inquire. — His style is 
highly elaborated. His first care is to be delicately melodious. 
He strives also to avoid the very appearance of harshness in the 
union of ideas. As a consequence, he is rather wanting in vigour, 
is driven upon affected inversions, and is obliged often to prolong 
his sentences to a tedious length before his smooth circumlocutions 
amount to a complete expression. 



406 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

George Berkeley (1684-1753), Bishop of Cloyne, established him- 
self in a high jiliiiosopliical reputation. Born in Ireland, he was 
educated at Kilkenny School and at Trinity College, Dublin. A 
precocious youth, he published his first work at the age of twenty- 
three — ' An Attempt to demonstrate Arithmetic without the aid of 
Algebra or Geometry.' In 1709 (at age twenty-five) he wrote liis 
first psychological work, ' The Theory of Vision,' remarkable as the 
earliest attempt to distinguish in an act of vision between what we 
actually see with the eye and what we supply from former ex[teri- 
ence. In the following year(i7io)he published his 'Principles 
of Human Knowledge,' containing views so original th;it they — or 
at least misconcei)ti<)iis of them — have become identified with his 
name. The popular notion was that he denied the existence of 
"Matter"; and this current misconception was not in the least 
modified by his re])eated protests that what he denied the exist- 
ence of was matter in the metaphysical sense, not matter as 
understood by plain men. After the age of twenty-seven, he 
published no further novelty in psychology, although in some 
of his other works he expounded his Idealism at greater length. 
He wrote in favour of passive obedience and non-resistance; 
travelled (m the Continent ; and is said to have literally been 
the death of Malebranche in Paris, arguing with that phil- 
osopher while he was suflering from infiammation of the lungs. 
About 1722 he became acquainted with Miss Vanhomrigh, Swift's 
Vanessa, who left liini half of Inr fortune. In 1728 he set out on 
a philanthropic scheme to cnnvcrt the American Indians to Chris- 
tianity by estalilishing a college in the 1 Bermudas. This scheme 
failing through breach of faith on the part of Sir R. Walpole, 
Berkeley returned, and was soon preferred to the see of Cloyne. 
He took part in the deistic controversy; his 'Minute Philosoplier ' 
is a most acute attack on tlie deistic positions. — He is described 
as "a handsome man, with a countenance full of meaning and 
benignity, remarkable for great strength of limbs; and, till his 
sedentary life impaired it, of a very robust constitution." The 
characteristic of his intellect was extraordinary subtlety rather than 
solid judgment. He had, perha])s, too warm an imagination to 
arrive at sound and sober conclusions. Something of this caprice 
of imagination appears in his conduct; contrast his jihilandering 
scheme to convert the Indians with morose Swift's endeavours to 
improve the condition of the Irish peasants. Beikeley, too, was 
an Irish clergyman ; and in the elevation of his i)arishioners 
might have found an ample field for the strongest "enthusiasm 
of humanity." His style lias always been esteemed admirable: 
simple, felicitous, and sweetly melodious. The dialogues are sus- 
tained with great skill. 



HISTORY. 407 



HISTORY. 



There is no historian of any note in this period. Lawrence 
Echard (1671-1730), an English clergyman, wrote several histori- 
cal Avorks, but none of them have kejit a place among general 
readers. His 'History of Kome,' 'General Ecclesiastical Hi.story,' 
and ' History of England to the Revolution,' all obtained consider- 
able praise and circulation in their day, but have been superseded 
by the works of more eminent writers. 

The most famous antiquary of the period is John Strype 
(1643-1737), a most industrious collector of ecclesiastical anti- 
quities relating to the Reformation in England: author of ' An- 
nals of the Reformation,' and of separate 'Lives' of the various 
founders of the Anglican Church. 

With Strype may be mentioned Dr Humphrey Prideaux (1648- 
1724), author of a 'Connection of the History of the Cld and New 
Testament' (1715-17), a work still used by students of divinity. 
He wrote also a highly popular 'Life of Mahomet' (1707), and 
other works. 

Dr Potter (1674-1747), Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a 
manual of the 'Antiquities of Greece,' which was the standard 
work among students until superseded in some points by more 
thorough researches. Basil Kennett (1674-1714) wrote a similar 
work on ' Roman Antiquities,' which held its ground for nearly a 
century. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Eichard Bentley (1662-1742) is one of the most famous of 
English critics. He' was a graduate of Cambridge. In 1693 
he published sermons against atheism, which he had pieaclied 
as Boyle Lecturer. About this time he was ap])ointed Kee]ier 
of the Royal Library of St James. When Charles Boyle pub- 
lished his edition of ' Phalaris,' he animadverted on the in- 
civility of Bentley in suddenly recalling a book that he had 
boirowed from the lil)rary. Bentley took pungent notice of 
this, and of the general value of the 'Epistles of Phalaris,' in 
a dissertation appended to Wotton's 'Reflections on Temple's 
Ancient and IModern Learning' (1697). This was the begin- 
ning of the famous controversy burlesqued by Swift in his 
'Battle of the Books.' Boyle, vith the assistance of Atierbuiy 
and Aldrich, rtjiilied to the dissertation, and was thoui:ht to have 
demolished his antagonist. But Bentley, after two years' silence, 
came forward with an irref rag ably thorough exposure of the 
spuriousness of the Letters, seasoned with the most cutting and 
unsparing ridicule of his opponents. There had uevur been in 



408 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

English criticism such a disjjlay of scholarship and arrogrint wit ; 
and Bentley's fame was at once establislied. His other great 
performance was an attack on Collins, under the name of 'Pliilel- 
eutlu'rus Li[)siensis,' pointing out that the text of the New Testa- 
ment is less corrupt than the text of any clas.sical author, and 
exulting- in the Frce-th inker's unscholarly mistakes. Bentley was 
a man of imperious and capricious temper; and, as Master of 
Trinity, Cambridge, was involved in constant squabbles with the 
Fellows. His critical scholarship is universally allowed to have 
been prodigious. His sagacity in textual emendations is also 
highly extolled, though with the qualification that he is too 
bold. We laugh at many of his courageous liberties with the 
text of Milton ; a Eoman might have been equally amused with 
some of his emendations of Horace. His style has surprising 
force and wit, formed upon the scholastic models of unsparingly 
personal ncrimony. The times allowed great freedom of abuse 
in Controversy, and Bentley's natural temper had full scope. 

The two principal coadjutors of Addison and Steele in the 
'Spectator' were John Hughes (1667-1720) and Eustace Budgell 
(1685-1737). Both held Govermnent a])pointments. Hnghes was 
a refined ])oetical soul, wrote poems and dramas, and translated 
from Latin, French, ;ind Italian j)olite literature. His pajjers in 
the 'Spectator' approach very near to Addison's in finish and 
happy expression. The difference between them lies chiefly in 
simplicity. Hughes has longer and more involved sentences, and 
clogs the smooth flow of his rhythm with a greater number of 
epithets. — Budgell was a rough, vigorous, di.ssi])ated barrister, 
who preferred making a figuie in the coflee-houses and in litera- 
ture ti> the jiractice of his profession. His humour is compara- 
tively obstreperous, of the Defoe and ^lacaulay type, which the 
French seem to consider peculiarly English. It is genial rather 
from the author's hearty enjoyment of the fun he is making than 
from any sympathy with the objects of his derision. The 'She 
Romp Club' and the rural sjjorts of Sir Roger are from his pen. 
He Clime to an unfortunate end. Tindal, the deist, having be- 
queathed him ;!(^2ooo, he was suspected of having tampered with 
the will ; and, unable to bear the disgiace of such a suspicion, 
committed suicide by throwini^ himself into the Thames. 

Over iigainst these literary Whi^s may be mentioned the literary 
Tories, the associates of Swift in the 'Examiner' and else^\here. 
Passing over IVfrs Manley, the novelist, who conduete I the 'Ex- 
aminer' after Swift, and who had been prosecuted for a satire 
on the Whig statesmen, we may single out Dr John Arbuthnot 
(1667-1735) as being, next to Swift, and excluding Pope, by far 
the ablest writer on the Tory side. His best performance, 'The 
History of John Bull,' a satire on Marlborough and the war, was 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 409 

ascribed to Swift, and is usually printed among Swift's works. 
Swift said of him — " He has more wit than we all have, and his 
humanity is equal to his wit." Arbutlmot was one of the northern 
Scots that were now beginning to push their fortunes in London, 
lie w.is liorn in Kincardineshire, at a town of his own name, and 
studied medicine in Aberdeen. Immediately after completing his 
stu ies he went to Loudon, and made a livelihood at first by 
teaching mathematics. He soon brought himself into notice by 
some tracts on mathematical and medical subjects. In 1705 he 
■was appointed physician extraordinary to Queen Anne; in lyog 
physician ordinary. He became a leading wit in the coffee- 
houses. When Swift came over from Ireland in 1708, and the 
Tories concerted a grand assault upon the Whigs, Arbutlmot's 
ready pen supplied some of the most effective missiles of ofTeuce. 
The ' History of John Bull' by Arbuthnot, the 'Conduct of the 
Allies' by Swift, and 'The Defence of Saclieverell ' by Atteibury, 
were the three great literary contrilmtions to the fall of the Whig 
Government: the eulogist of Arbutlmot usually gives the honour 
to Arbuthnot's performance, the euL'gist of Swift to Swift's, tlie 
eulogist of Atterbury to Atterbury's. Arbuthnot's other great 
production is his share in the writings of ' Martinus Scriblerus,' 
sometimes ]irinted with Swift's works, sometimes with Poj)e's. 
The Scriblerus Clul) was instituted in 17 14 by P'ii)e, Swift, 
Arl)Uthnot, Gay, Parnell, Atterliury, Congreve, and others. The 
object was to satirise the absurdities of literature. The members 
were actuated a good deal by the spirit of Pope's ' Dunciad.' 
Arbuthnot bore a large share in the works published under the 
signature of Scriblerus. In the essay on the 'Art of Sinking,' 
his hand can be traced in .several of the chapters. — Arbuthnot's 
fortunes declined at the accession of George, and his later days 
were made unhappy by poverty and ilbhealth. — There is no col- 
lectea edition of his works. The 'John Bull' is usually jirinted 
in Swift's works, the 'Scriblerus' papers jtartly in Swiit's, partly 
in Pope's. He was exceedingly careless of what he wrote; all 
was done to serve a pas>ing purpose, and he took no pains to 
preserve either manuscript or ]irint. He must have been a man 
of great social tact and amiability. Swift seems to have loved 
him like a brother — "If the world had a dozen Arbuthnots 
in it," he wrote in one of his letters, "I woul I burn my Travels," 
The power of his satire was proved by its effects. He is the most 
versatile, as regards mood, of all the great wits of the period. 
When his feelings are not specially roused he is genial, lambent, 
good-liumnured ; but he was capable of genuine indignation, and 
sometimes lays on the lash with unsparing severity. His paper 
on the 'Altercation or Scolding of the Ancients' is in very happy 
humour ; his ' Art of Political Lying ' is more sarcastic ; and some 



410 FROM 17110 TO 1730. 

sallies usually attributed to him against Bishop Burnet, the favour- 
ite butt of Swift, are worthy of the savage Dean himself. 

One imposing figure in the public transactions of the time also 
deiiKuids a high pl.ice in tlie history of our literature — Henry St 
John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1673 1751). His chief j)lii]osophical 
and political works were written during the forced inaction of tlie 
latter half of his life, and in this manual he sjiould, in strict 
methotl, be jijaced in the following generation; but he is so thor- 
oughly identilied with the Queen Anne men that it would be 
an unprofitable violation of the usual arrangement not to mention 
him here. 

Entering Parliament in 1701 at the age of twenty-three, he had 
not to watch and wait for distinction ; his splendid jiowers placed 
him at once in the front rank. He gained a seat in ihe Cabinet in 
1704 as Secretary at War, and remained in olHce four years. Dur- 
ing the four last years of Queen Anne, he and Harley were the 
leaders of the Administration. He quarrelled with Harley, and 
supplanted him as formal head of the Government about a week 
before the Queen's death. With the death of the Queen his 
power ca,me to an end : he Avas suspected of having intrigued for 
the succession of the Pretender Prince, and had to flee the country. 
For some time he was secretary to the Pretender ; and, turinng to 
literary composition, produced ' Reflections on Exile,' and a defence 
of his conduct in the form of a letter to Sir William Wyndham. 
After seven years' exile, he was ])eriuitted to return, Imt was not 
suffered to resume his place in the House of Lords. Upon his re- 
turn he wrote in the ' Craftsman ' a series of letters, afterwards 
reprinted as 'A Dissertation cm Parties,' and busieil himself with 
other studies and writings. In 1735 ^^^ w'ent to France, this time 
voluntarily, and lived there for seven years, during which he pul> 
lished 'Letters on the Siudy of History' and a 'Letter on the 
True Use of Retirement' On his final return to England in 
1742, he settled at Battersea; wiote 'Letters on the Sjiirit of 
Patriotism ' ; the ' Idea of a Patriot King' (pub. in 1749) ; and the 
various philosophical and other works published after his death by 
his literary executor, David Mallet. — Much has heen said of the 
siilendid personality of Bolingbroke. Pope gave poetic expression 
to a very general feeling when he said that, on the appearance of 
a comet, he could not help thinking that it had been sent as a 
chariot to take his friend St John away. "Nature," writes 
Gohismith, "seemed not less kind to him in her external em- 
bellishments, than in adorning his mind. With the giaces of 
a handsome person, an 1 a face in which dignity was h.ippily 
blended with sweetness, he had a manner of address that was 
very engaging. His vivacity was always awake, his apprehen- 
sion was quick, his wit refined, and his memory amazing; his 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 411 

subtlety in thinking and reasoning was profound ; and all these 
talents were adorned with an elocution that was irresistible." 
His constitutional energy was prodigious, appearing in the wild 
excesses i)f his dissolute youth, no less than in his hard work and 
coni[»licated intrigues as a Minister of State. The most striking 
feature of his style is splendour of declamation. All his works, 
philosoi)hical as well as political, are written in a declamatory 
strain, and read like elaborate speeches. Not only have the 
words an oratorical glow and vehemence, but the general structure 
is the structure of spoken rather than of written style. The dedi- 
cation of his 'Dissertation on Parties,' addressed to Sir llobert 
\\ alpole, is an extreme example : — 

"Let me now njipcal to you, sir. Are these designs which any man, who 
is boru a Briton, iu any circumstances, in any situation, ouglit to be 
ashamed or alViiid to avow ? You cannot think it. You will not say it. 
That never can be the case, until we cease to tliink like fVeetnen, as well as 
to be free. Are these designs in favour of ihe I'retender? I appeal to the 
whole world ; and 1 scorn witli a just indignation to give any other answer 
to so shameless and so senseless an objection. No; tliey are des'gns in 
favour of the constitution ; designs to secure, to foriiiy, to per])etuate that 
exci Ueut system of government. 1 court no other cause ; 1 claim no other 
merit." 

Here not only the vehement eloquence, but the short sentences, 
the pointed balance, the repetition of the leading word (as in 
"designs"), the figures of interrogation and exclamation — all 
belong to oratory. We meet some or all of these characteristics 
in every page. Although, however, in almost every page we 
meet with the short oratorical sentence familiar to readers of 
Macaulay, his sentences are not in general so short as in the 
above extract. On the contrary, he is rather famous for long 
sentences — remarkable on this ground, that the conclusion of the 
piedicate is put off by one clause after another, and yet these 
clauses are so admirably placed that there is seldom the least 
confusion. The stiucture of these long sentences is all the more 
simple, that very often the latter part is a paraphrase or extension 
in apposition to some word in the former part. Thus — 

"How ditTerent tlie case is, on tlie other side, will appear not only from 
the actions, but from the iirinciples of the (Juurt jiarty, as we find them 
avowed in their writings; principles more dangirous to liberty, though not 
fcO directly, nor so openly levelled against it, than even any of those, had as 
they were, whicli s>ome of these men value themselves for having lormerly 
op(iosed." 

This structure is also oratorical.^ To call Bolingbroke a splendid 

1 In singling out certain features of Boliiigbroke's style as oratorical, I do not 
mean to imply tliat these are contined to oratory. I call tlieni oruloric-ul liecause 
tliey are such as occur iu nearly every Parliamentary siieech of the eighteenth 
century, aud because they are peculiarly litted to spoken address. 



412 FROM 1700 TO 1730. 

declaimer is to give him little more than half his dua 7Te is 
also a wit ; and at every turn he electrifies the reader with some 
felicitous stroke of brevity, or hajipy adjustment of words to his 
meaning. 

To enumerate all the miscellaneous writers of this time would 
be as much out of place in the present work as to enumerate all 
that have written to newspajjcrs or maLcazincs within the nine- 
teenth century. A great many periodicals, weekly, l>i- weekly, 
or daily, some continued for a few weeks, some for one or two 
years, were published contemporaneously with, and after the 
decease of, Defoe's ' Review ' ; Steele's 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' and 
'Guardian'; and Swift's 'Examiner.' A long list is given in 
the beginning of vol. iv. of Drake's Essays on Steele, Addison, 
and Jolinson. The names that we meet with are such as — 'The 
Ke-Tatler'; 'The Female Tatler'; 'The Tory Tatler'; 'The 
Grumbler'; 'The Medley' (conducted by an accnmplished man, 
Mr M ayn waring) ; 'The Lay Monastery' (conducted by the [loct 
Sir Richard Blackmore) ; 'The Censor' (conducted I'y Lewis 
Theobald, the annotator of Shakspeare) ; ' Tlie Free-thinker' (sui> 
ported by Ambrose Piiillips, the friend of Addison, and George 
Stubbs, a scholarly elegant recluse clergyman) ; ' The Plam 
Dealer' (started by Aaion Hill); 'The Intelligencer' (by Dr 
Sheridan, the friend and biographer of Swift). Most of the 
periodicals of the day were political ; others diversified politics 
with literature, on the i»lan of the ' Review ' ; and some con- 
sisted of a few numbers directed against an oljject of aversion 
in literature, manners, or even commerce. Periodicals were the 
fashion, most of them very short-lived. A periodical sheet was 
started to vent an opinion that, in the present day, would be 
expressed in a letter, or a series of letters, to a daily newspaper; 
and expired either when the author had exhausted the idea, or 
when the public had received euough and refused to purchase 
moreii 



CHAPTER VII. 



FROM 1730 TO 1760, 



SAMUEL JOHITSOIT, 

1709— 1784. 

The great " Moralist " and " Lexicographer " was the son of a 
respectable bookseller in Lichfield, where he was born 011 tlie i8th 
of September. The mistress of a dame's school there praised him 
as the best scholar she ever had. After five years at a higher 
school in Lichfield, one year at the school of Stourbridge, and two 
years loitering at home, he was sent, at the age of nineteen, to 
Pembroke College, Oxford. He was too desultory to confine him- 
self to the studies of the place, and continued in the library of the 
college the wide miscellaneous reading he had practised in his 
father's shop. Yet his fluent command of Latin procured him 
marked attention. A Latin hexameter version of Pope's ' Messiah,' 
which he executed as a Christmas exercise, was considered so good 
that Pope is said to have declared that posterity would be in doubt 
which was the original and which the translation. Owing to 
poverty, he left Oxford in 1731 wi;hout taking a degree. Too 
constitutionally irregular to settle down to a profession, he lived 
at home for several months ; acted for several months as an usher ; 
lived with a friend in Birmingham ; translated for a Birmingham 
bookseller ' Lobo's Journey to Abyssinia ' (pub. in 1735); returned 
to Lichfield ; married Mrs Porter of Birmingham, a widow with 
_;^8oo ; and set up a boarding-school near Lichfield. Finally, the 
school not succeeding, he removed to London in 1737, and fur the 
next quarter of a century maintained himself by his pen. 

Had he been born a generation sooner, and gone to London in 



4 U Fi;oM 1730 TO 17G0. 

the reign of Queen Anne, he might have been retained as a party- 
writer, and well rewarded. Bolingbroke or Harley niiglit have 
employed him t(t abuse Marlborough or browbeat the ' FreehuKler.' 
liut in 1737 i)arty- writers were not in demand. The man of 
letters might possibly meet with a weaUhy patron, but his inist 
was chietiy in ihe booksidlers, who were l)eginning to compete for 
the favour of the i)ublic with periodicals, editions, translations, 
and every sort of compilation that was likely to sell. There was 
pK-nty of employment, though at a low rate of remuneration, for 
men of ability ; and hud Johnson pi>ssessed ordinary business 
habits and industry, he might have lived comfortalily. During 
the first ten yeais of his London life he wrote chielly for Cave, 
the publisher oi' the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (established in 1731), 
composing prefaces, lives of eminent men, abridgments, and mis- 
cellaneous pajieis. He succeeded William (Juthrie as writer of the 
Parliamentary Debates (which were forbidden to be reported, but 
■which Cave introduced into his Magazine as the proceedings of 
the Senate of Lilliput, sending men to the House to bring away 
what they could remember, and getting a clever man to compose 
S[ieeches according to their reports). In 1738 he pul)li^hed his 
poem "London." In 1747 his fame was well established, and he 
was engaged by a combination of London booksellers for ;^i575 
to pre|)aie his famous Dictionary. In 1750, before this was com- 
pleted, he be^^an the work that raised his fame to its full height, a 
jieriodical under the title of 'The Rambler.' This he carried on 
single-handed twice a- week for two years. In 1753 he made 
several contriliutions to 'The Adventurer.' The Dictionary was 
coni]iletel in 1755; and, to grace his name on the title-page, 
the University of Oxford presented him with the degice of M.A. 
Thereafter he continued his midtifaiious writings for a livelihood. 
In 1756 he wrote several reviews and other papers for the newly 
started ' Liteiary Magazine.' From 1758 to 1760 he wrote the 
papers known as ' The Idler' for Payne's ' Universal Chronicle.' 
In 1759 he wrote 'Rasselas.' 

The year 1762 relieved him from his quarter of a century of 
literary drudgery, bringing him from Government an annual pen- 
sion of ;£s°°- From that date he wrote comparatively little; 
his chief pro iuctions were the Notes to his edition of Sliak-<peare, 
1765; his 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,' and 
' "Taxation no Tyranny,' 1775; and the last and best of his 
works, 'The Lives of the Poets,' prefixed as detached Prefaces to 
an edition of the English Poets, 1779-81. After being made 
indc])endent by the i)ensionj he spent a great part of his time in 
Social enjoyment, becondng the conversational oracle of a circle 
of distin,i;uished literary friends. In 1763 he met Dos well, to 
whose pamstaking record he is maiidy indebted for the perpetuor 



SAMUEL JOIIXSON. 415 

tion of his fame. In 1764 he founded the Literary Clnb (still 
existing), which met every Monday at the Turk's Head. In 1765 
he made ihe acquaintance of the 'I'hrales ; dined with tliein fre- 
quently ; and finally came to be cc^isidered as a member of their 
family. At his own house in r>olt Court, where Boswell found 
him on his return fiom the HeVn-ides, he charitably kept a number 
of humble dependants — Mrs Williams, iNfrs Desmoulins, Dr Robert 
Levett, lilack Frank, and a cat called Hodge. Among the inti- 
mate associates of his latter years were Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, 
Topham Beauclerk, Langtou, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, Arthur Murphy. He died in his house in Bolt Court. 

Johnson's appearance was far from prepossessing. " He is, 
indeed," says Miss Burney, "very il!-favoured. He has naturally 
a noble figure, tall, stout, grand, and authoritative ; but he stoops 
horribly; his liack is quite round, his mouth is continually open- 
ing and shutting as if he were chewing something; he has a 
singular method of twirling his fingers and twisting his hands ; 
his vast body is in constant agitation, see-sawing backwards and 
forwards; his feet are never for a moment quiet; and his whole 
gieat frame looks often as if it were going to roll itself quite 
voluntarily froui its chair to the floor." One of his cheeks was 
disfigured by the marks of scrofula ; and his face showed the 
peculiar nervous twitching known as St Yitus's Dance. His gait 
was rolling and clumsy; he seemed to be struggling with fetters. 

Along with the scrofulous taint, he had inherited from his father 
a disposition to melancholy, which came upon him in cruel fits. 
During these gloomy seasons he was more imperious and irritable 
than Swift. He had inherited, also, a deep-rooted indolence and a 
hatred of regular work. His ambition, his desire to excel, was not 
alone sufficient to overcome this constitutional indolence. He 
needed to be "well whipt" at school, and when grown to man- 
hood he did little more than enough to keep himself and his wife 
from starving. England gave him but " fourpence-halfpenny a- 
day," if she gave him no more, chiefly because he was too lazy to 
work for more. 

His intellectual powers must not be judged by what he produced. 
He was indolent not in the sense of dozing away his time without 
thinking or reading, but in the sense of being averse both to pro- 
ductive exeition and to regular application. In his father's shop 
at I^ichfield, in the college library at Pembroke, and in arranging 
the vast llarleian library of books and j)amphlets, he was thoroughly 
in his element ; ranging with luxurious pleasure from book to 
book, and insatiably storing up miscellaneous knowledge. Partly 
in consequence of thus reserving his strength, he was capable of 
intense concentration when he did apply his mind to production. 



416 I"i:O.M 173(1 TO 17(J0. 

In (lashing off a definition, a criticism, or a general precept, he 
seized with great force upon the leading features. In these mo- 
ments of intense concentration, he had the power of doing in a 
wonderfidly short time what Lord Brougham describes as seizing 
the kernel and leaving the husk. This hahit of making sliort 
work with a subject gives his writings their most distinctive char- 
acter. The bold comprehensive grasp, right usually in the main, 
has always dee|)ly impressed the achnirers of force. On the other 
hand, his hardihood in making untenably sweeping assertions, his 
inevitable omission of many considerations in the course of his 
intense but hurried survey, has severely tried the patience of the 
lovers of delicate accuracy. 

His naturally powerful reason was a good deal clouded by vari- 
ous prejudices. He would believe no good either of republican or 
of infidel. He did injustice to Milton; he abused Bolingbr-ike 
without reading him ; and Boswell mentions his having uttered 
about Hume a remark too gmss to be committed to paper. He 
hated and ridiculed the French and the Scotch, and refused to be 
persuaded that anybody could live happily out of London. In 
these things, as in many others, he showed gross egotism and want 
of sympathy. Swift was not more overbearing nor more intoler- 
ant of contradiction. He had a peculiar horror of death, and if 
anybody was said to feel differently, he at once pronounced them 
either mad or mendacious. He was a humane, warm-hearted m;m, 
at least towards cases of extreme distress brought on by no fault 
of the sufferer; he opened his house as a retreat for several "in- 
firm and decayed " jtersons ; amused himself with their quiirrels, 
and patiently endured their ca|)rices. He had a few strong attach- 
ments. But even in his displays of benevolence and kindly affec- 
tion, you see his natural love of domineering; he allowed nobody 
but himself to praise his favourites, and he treated them roughly 
when they deviated from his ideal of propriety. He was fre- 
quently humorous at his own expense, but he would allow nobody 
else to take liberties with him ; he made boisterous mirth at the 
expense of certain of his friends, but he would not endure that the 
slightest air of ridicule should be thrown upon any of his own 
saymgs or doings. Often in his writings he enforced the "vanity 
of human wishes." His ' Rasselas ' is virtually a sermon on the 
impossibility of finding perfect happiness in this world ; one of its 
professed objects is the benevolent achievement of damping the 
ardour of youth. Yet when anybody else ventured to complain 
in his presence, he was read-y to avow that the world is a very 
enjoyable world, and to denounce all complaints as mere senti- 
mental whining. 

Though renowned as a biographer, he was far from being car- 
ried away by hero-worship, lie is rather chary than enthusiastic 



SAMUEL .TOTTXSON". 417 

in his allowance of merit, and scatters witliout mercy any air ot 
romance or exairgeration that may have heen gathered abnut an 
eminent name by the zeal of admirers. When Sir Thomas Browne, 
whom Johnson is said to have admired and imitated, declares that 
"his life has been a miiacle of thirty years ; which to relate were 
not history, hut a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable," 
— Johnson remarks somewhat sarcastically that '" self-love, co- 
operating with an imagination vigorous and fertile as that of 
Browne's, will find or make objects of astonishment in every 
man's life." 

Opinions. — In politics Johnson was a bigoted Tory. He could 
not repress his political leanings even m writing the definitions for 
his Dictionary. ^Vhen writing the Parliamentary Debates for 
Cave, he " took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best 
of it" He wrote little in direct support of the Tories. After he 
received his pension he conceived himself bound to do something, 
and composed a few jiamphiets — 'The False Alarm,' 'The Falk- 
land Islands,' 'The Patriot,' and 'Taxation no Tyranny.' In 
these he stated his views of true liberty and true patriotism, and 
maintained that the English Parliament had a right to tax the 
Americans without their consent. 

Naturally a pious man, he was a bigoted Chnrcliman. He hated 
Dissenters as "honestly" as he hated Whigs, infidels, French, and 
Scotchmen. 

Though called the Great Moralist, he expouni''ed nothing that 
could be called an ethical system. He simply applied strong good 
sense to the common situations of life. His first principles were 
understood, not stated. 

The merits of his literary criticisms were the result of his good 
sense, their defects the result of his narrow sympathies and frag- 
mentary knowledge. He seldom or never erred on the side of ex- 
travagant praise. He admired the wonderful powers of Shakspeare, 
defended the violation of the " unities," and the mixtuie of comedy 
with tragedy ; but, along with the great dramatist's virtues he enu- 
merated con^iderable failings — occasional "tumour, meanness, tedi- 
ousness, and obscurity," wearisome narration, and the introduction 
of frigid conceits and quibbles, to the ruin of true sublimity and 
pathos. His tendency was to banish from poetry everything that 
would not be approved of by sober reason. In some points his 
principles of criticism were better than his practice. He laid down 
that "in order to make a true estimate of the alnlities and merits 
of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age 
and the opinions of his contemporaries." But this was a perfec- 
tion-height of critical qualilJcation that indolence would not sufl'er 
himself to attain. He wrote his notes on Shakspeare without 

2 D 



418 FROM 1730 TO 17G0. 

liaving read a single one of the cnnteniporary dramatists. He 
had plenty of time, but he preferred to indulge his appetite for 
social talk and desultory reading. Sometimes, too, lie laid down 
principles that he broke habitually in his own composition. He 
satirised i)lays "where declamation roars and passion slreps " ; yet 
his own ' Irene ' belongs to the category. He condemned the prac- 
tice of filling out the sound of a period with unnecessary words. 
It is but fiiir to say that in later lile he recognised his own faults. 
On one occasion, when some jierson read his ' Irene' aloud, he left 
the room, saying he did not think it had been so bad ; and in his 
'Lives of the Poets' he tried hard to work himself out of the son- 
orous grandiloquence of the ' llambler.' 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — Johnson's memory for words, and consequeTit com- 
mand of language, was amazing. In this respect he stands in the 
very first rank. One might suppose, from what is usually said 
concerning the great preponderance of Latin words in his diction, 
that he faiUd in command of homelier language ; but this is a 
mistake. His 'Pkambler' is highly Latinised; but in his Preface 
to Shaksjieare, 1768, we trace the beginnings of a homelier style. 
In his ' Lives of the Poets ' the style is not so Latinised as the 
average style of the present day. The proportion of Latin words 
is not above half as great as in a leader of the 'Times,' He is 
often studiously homely, and shows a perfect command of honnly 
diction. Perhaps the less pomjious diction of his latest produc- 
tions is partly a result of his great ])ractice in conveisation. As 
we have just said, he was conscious of the blemish in his ' Rambler,' 
and endeavoured to amend. 

As an example of studied variety of expression, take the follow- 
ing comparison between punch and conversation : — 

"Tlio spirit, volatile and fiery, is tlie proper emblem of vivarity and wit ; 
the acidity of the lemon will very apthi fiijurr. piuifjency of riiillery and 
acriiiioiiy of censure : sugar is tlie natural reprcscntalive of luscious adula- 
tion and gentle comiilaisance ; and water is tlic proper hicruijli/phic of easy 
I'rattle, innocent ami tasteless." 

Sentences and Pararjraphs. — The often-remarked mannerism of 
Jolinscn's sentences does not consist in one particular, but in the 
combination of several. 

(i.) The frequent use of the balance structure. He em[iloys 
liberally all the arts of .balance both in sound and in sense. In 
the ' Lives of the Poets ' he is much less elaborate and sonorous in 
his balances than in the 'Pxambler.' In the following sentence 
from the ' llambler' there are five different balances ; — 

"It is easy to laugh at the folly of him who refuses immediate case for 



SAMUEL JOIIXSON. 419 

distant pleasure, and instead of enjoying llie V.lessings of life, lets life ^'lide 
away in preparations to enjoy thprti ; it affoi-ds such o|ipi)rtunities of trium- 
phant exultation, to exemplify the uncertainty of the liumaii state, to rouse 
mortals from their dream, and inform them of the silent celerity of time, 
that we may believe authors willing rather to transmit than examine so 
advantiii^eous a i)riiiciple, and more inclined to pursue a track so smooth 
and so flowery, than attentively to consider whether it leads to truth. 

In the 'Lives of the Poets' there are few sentences of such 
sonorous amplitude. In this later work balances are nuiuerous; 
but, on the whole, it may be said that there the cadence is more 
varied, and that we have a greater proportion (if curt, short ben- 
tences and balances, in the following emphatic form : — 

"Observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on hj'per- 
bolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters them 
desires to be applauded rather than credited. " 

Such balances as the following are very common — "If his jests 
are coarse, his arguments are strong;" "too judiciotis to commit 
fatilts, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence;" " liis 
figures neither divert by distortion, nor amaze by exaggeration;" 
"however exalted by genius, or enlarged by study." 

(2.) Short comprehensive sentences. These appear plentifully 
in all his works, but, partly from the nature of the subject, are 
especially plentiful in the 'Lives of the Poets.' The following 
short passage is a fair illustration : — 

" In the poetical works of Swift, there is not much upon which the critic 
can exeicise his powers. 'J'hey are often humorous, almost always light, and 
liave the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. 
They are, for the most ]iart, what their author iutemleil. The diction ia 
correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom 
occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his \er.-503 
exemplify his own definitiou of a good style ; they consist of ' proper words 
in proper places.'" 

(3.) One of the most striking mannerisms in Johnson's com- 
position belongs strictly to the paragra2)h — to the arrangement of 
sentences rather than the arrangement of clauses. He has a habit 
of abruptly introducing a general principle before the particular 
circumstances that it applies to. We have remarked this as a 
peculiarity in Macaulay's style. If Johnson did not originate this 
form of composition, he was at least the first to bring it into 
prominence. After him it was extensively adopted. Macaulay 
is hitherto his most celebrated imitator. 

The following passage concerning Cowley is an example of his 
abrupt introduction of general principles. It exemi)lities also a 
cognate practice of abrui)tly bringing in a person or thing con 
trasted or compared with the subject of the discourse: — 

"In the year 1647, his ' Mistre.-s' was publi.-h(d ; for he imagined, as 
he declared in a preface to a subsei^uent edition, that 'poets are scarcely 



420 FROM 173U TO 1760. 

tlioujlit freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging 

thumsc^lves to \>e true to love.' 

"This ohiigation 1o amorous dittios owes, I believe, its orj^inal to the 
fame of Pftriticli, who, in an as^e rudo and uncultivated, by his tuneful 
homage to iiis L;iura, reliiu-d the manners of the lettered world, and filled 
Kuidpe with love and ]ioctry. But the basii of oil excellence is truth: he 
that jiriifcstics luve oiKjId to feel its power. Petrarch was a real lover, and 
Laurn dduhlless deserved his tenderness. 0/ Cowley we are told by 15arnes, 
wiio had means enough of inforinntion, that, wliatt^ver he may talk of his 
own iiilliunnialiility, and the variety of characters by which Ids heart was 
di^iihd, he in reality was iu love but once, and then never liad resolution to 
tell his ])a-sion. 

"This coMsiilcrntion cannot but nbate in some measure the reader's esteem 
for the works and tin; author. To love excellence is natural ; it is natural 
likeiri.se for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate display of his 
own qualijiealions. The desire of jileanng has in different men jjroclaccd 
actions af heroism, and effusions of wit ; but it seems as reasonable to ajipear 
the rhampion as the poet of ' an aiiy nothing,* and to (luariel as to write for 
what Co\\ ley might have leaineJ from his master Pindar to call ' the dream 
of a shadow.' " 

To make up what is called the "Johnsonian manner," or 
" Jolinsoiiese," we must take not only these striking peculiarities 
of sentence-structure, but certain other peculiarities, especially a 
peculiar use of the abstract noun, and vigorous comprehensive 
brevity. Mncaulay's sentence-structure is modelled in a consider- 
able degree up'in Johnson's, yut the resemblance is not at first so 
striking, because ^Macaulay is a concrete and diffuse writer, whereas 
Johnson is extremely abstract and condensed. 

Fi'iuTes of iSpeecL — Similitudes. — Our author's prose is not 
ornate. He studies condensed expression rather than einbellish- 
ment or illustration. None of our great prose writers is so spar- 
ing of similitudes. In the 'Piambler' there are pages that contain 
hai'dly a single metaphor. 

The few similitudes that he does use are in harmony with the 
general loftiness of his style. Thus, Imlac is represented as saying 
to Rasselas — 

"The world, which you fit^nre to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake 
in the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests, and boiling with 
whirljiools ; you will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence, 
and sometimes dashed against the rocks of treacdiery. " 

Again, writing of the subversion of the Eoman Empire by the 
Northern barbarians, he says that had America then been dis- 
covered, and navigation sufHciently advanced, " the intumescence 
of nations tvuuld have found its vent, like all oilier expansive vio- 
lences, uJiere there was least resistance." 

Allegory. — There are several alkgories in the 'Rambler' on the 
model of the allegories in the 'Spectator.' One in the 'Rambler' 
on " Wit and Learning " is the model of Dr Campbell's allegory 
on " Probability and Plausibility," eiamined minutely in the Ap- 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 421 

pendix to Bain's 'Rhetoric' The allegoric style of composition, 
though still occasioniilly used, now makes its appearance in com- 
position much less frequently than in the age of Johnson. The 
following is an example of the artificial manufacture, from 'Ram- 
bler ' 96 — " Truth, J'alsehood, and Fiction, an Allegory " : — 

"While the world was yet in its infancy, Truth came among mortals 
fiom above, and Falsepood irom below. Tkuth was the daiigliter of 
Jupiter and Wisdom; Falsehood was the progeny of Folly impregnated 
by tlie wind. . . . 

" It sometimes happened that the antagonists met in full opposition. In 
these encounters, Falsehood always invested her head with clouds, and 
commanded Fraud to [ilace ambu.slies about her. In lier left hand .she 
bore the shield of Iwi'UDENCE, and tlie quiver of Sophistry rattled on her 
shoulder. All the passions attended at her call ; Vanity clapped her wings 
before, and Obstinacy supported her behind," &c. 

Contra^. — From his earliest composition to his last, Johnson 
shows a liking for strong antithesis. It is frequently combined 
■with balance, and has been already to some extent illustrated. 
He is particularly fond of antithesis in his succinct expositions of 
character and style. Goldsmith is "a man who had the art of 
being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion ; 
whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without 
constraint, and easy without weakness." Rowe "seldom moves 
either pity or terror, but he often elevates the sentiments ; he sel- 
dom pierces the breast, but he always delights the ear, and often 
improves the understanding." "The 'Thessalia' of Rowe deserves 
more notice than it obtains, and as it is more read will be more 
esteemed." We have already quoted his account of Addison. 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. — Perhaps the most common objection to Johnson's 
style is that it contains too many heavy wurds of Latin origin. 
The objection is just, but there are one or two things that the 
objectors commonly overlook. One is that his earlier style is 
much more Latinised than his later : as already remarked, his 
' Lives of the Poets ' contains more of the Saxon element than the 
average style of the present day. Another thing is that his Latin 
derivatives are not of his own coining : he told Boswell that he 
had not taken upon him to add more than four or five words to 
the language ; and being, as a lexicographer, brought painfully 
face to face with gaps in our language, he must in this respect 
have practised no little self-denial. Finally, he is much less 
Latinised than several writers of note both before and after him 
— than Sir Thomas Browne, for instance, or Robertson, or Gibbon. 

The 'Rambler* certainly is a very ponderous composition. Re- 
viewing it himself later iu life, he sh lok his head, and exclaimed 



422 FKOM 17:50 TO 17G0. 

that it was "too wonly." Take as an example the following, 
which is not an extreme case : — 

"In cities,' and yet more in courts, the tniimte iliscriminations wliich 
distini^uisli one from unother aic for the most jiart clfaccil, tlie pfculiaritics 
of temper awl opinion are gradually worn ;iway by |iroiiiiscuoiis converse, 
as aiicrnlar l)0(lies and uneven surfaces lose their points and asperities by 
lre.|nent attrition against one anotlier, and approach by degrees to uniform 
lotnmiity." 

Ci)mpare this with a passage from Sterne, where you have the 
same idea : — 

"Tlio genius of a people, where nntliini; bit the mmiari'liy is salique, 
havim^ cedi-d tliis dep:irtinent, witli sundiy otiiei-s, to'ully to the women, 
liy a coiitiiiual liig:,'ling with custoiiiers of all raidcs and sizes fi'om morning 
to iiigiit, like so many roui^di pebbles shook along together in a bag, by anu- 
cable collisions they have worn down their Msperities and sharp aiigU-s, anil 
not oidy become round and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish 
like a brilliant." 

Again, take the foUowing, which is ratlier an extreme example, 
and reads almost like caricature "Johnsonese": — 

"Tlie proverliial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors Iiave informed us, 
that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expi-nses, b}' the profusion of sums 
too little singly to alarm our caution, auil which we never snlfer ourselves 
to consiiler together. Of the same kind is tlie prodigality of life; lie that 
hopes to look back, hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to 
know the inesent Vidiie of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle 
of time fall useless to the ground." 

A simple writer would have expressed this in some such way as 
the following : — 

"Take care of the pennies," savs the tluifty old jnoveib, "and the pounds 
will tiike care of tliem>elves." In hke manner we might say, Take care of 
the minutes, and the years will take care of themselves. 

The heaviness of Johnson's style does not arise from any ab- 
struseiiess in the subject-matter. The 'Rambler' took up mainly 
subjects suitable for light reiding. The explanation seems to be 
that his ear was enamoured of a measured ponderous movement, 
of a lofty departure from the simple pace of common siieech, and 
that he was not versatile enough to adopt any other, oven when 
this was flagrantly unsuitable to the occasion. Myrtilla, a young 
lady of sixteen, is made to state her case as follows : — 

"Sir, you scin in all your papers to he an enemy of tyranny, and to look 
with imiiartialiiy upon the world ; I shall therefore lay "my case before you, 
and hope by your decision to be set IVee from uiireasonalile re>traints, and 
enabled to justify myself against the aecusations which s[iite and peevish- 
ness produce against me. 

"At the age of five years I lost my mother, and my father, being not 
qualified to superintend the education of a girl, committed me to tiie care of 
his sister, who instructed lue with the authority, and, not to deny her what 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 423 

she ma)' justly claim, with the affection of a parent. She had not very 
elevated sentiments or extensive views, but her principles were good, and 
her intentions jnire; and though some may practise more virtues, scarce any 
commit fewer faults." 

In tlie above extract we see one good example of the peculiar use 
of the abstract noun that has already been spoken of as peculiarly 
Johnsonian. He uses the abstract noun with an active verb as if 
it were the name of a person — "the accusations which spite and 
peevishness produce against me." Another example is seen in the 
extract immediately preceding — "sums too little singly <o alarm, 
our caution." This is one of Johnson's most characteristic jieculi- 
arities, and appears no less in his later than in his earlier worlvs. 

Clearness. — Writing with an intense concentration of his energies 
upon the work in hand, he is generally successful in seizing u[)on 
the most apposite words to express his meaning. He is also anx- 
ious to be understood, and guards the reader from misapprehension 
by stating what he does ?to< mean. (We have already exemplified 
his frequent use of contrast to explain qualities of style.) Eut he 
was too hurried to be a minutely accurate writer. His assertions 
are too unqualified. He had little of the scrupulous precision of 
De Quincey : the utmost we can say is, that his expressions are 
accurate in the main, and that he had an honest dislike to vague 
language. He ridicules the vague use of the wi>rd Nature, a sup- 
jiosititious entity not unfreqnently appealed to even in our time. 
Eassehis asks a philosopher what is meant by "living according to 
nature," and receives the following caricature in answer: — 

"To act according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fit- 
ness arising from the relations and (jualities of causes and elfects ; to ciuicur 
with tlie gieat and uneliangeahle schmie of universal fuliciiy ; to co-ojierite 
with the general disposition and tendency of the i)resent system of things. " 

Strength. — Johnson's style is seldom or never impassioned. He 
delivers himself with severe magisterial dignity and vigorous 
autiioiitative brevity. 

Robert Hall, in his early days, made Johnson a model, but soon 
gave him up, conqilaining of a want of fervour in his morality. 
Though profoundly convinced of the doetrines of Religion, lie sel- 
dom dilates on her "august solemnities," or on the grandeur of 
her hopes and fears. What he keeps principally in view is the 
beneficial effect of religious belief on human conduct, laying down 
the law in sonorous dogmas. 

In the presence of objects that raise emotions of sublimity in 
other men, he was on the watch to lay hold of general rules. In- 
stead of giving way to the aesthetic influences of the situation, he 
I>ondered on the causes or the moral value of them, and meditated 
dictatorial, high-sounding, general propositions. He acknowledged 
himself impressed by the ruins of Icolmkill ; but instead of giving 



424 FROM 1730 TO 17G0. 

expression to the sublime thoughts awakened by the place, he 
fabricated the following sentence : — 

" Whatever witlidraws us from the power of the senses ; whatever makes 
the past, tlie distant, or the future jiredoudnale over the present, advances 
us iu the dignity of thinking beings." ^ 

One may choose examples of his severity and comprehensive 
vigour from any page of the 'Rambler' or of the 'Lives of the 
Poets.' 

Pathos. — A certain softness is thrown over the stern moralising 
of the 'Rambler' by tiie humane designs of the moralist. Gt)od 
advice, however roughly given, if it is honest and not ill-natured, 
has a kindly effect. Further, there is a pathetic air of gloomy 
mvlancholy about his sonorous reflections on the vanity of human 
wishes. Rut there is little in any part of Johnson's writings to 
touch the warmer affections. 

On themes of sorrow, as on themes of sublimity, his power to 
move is paralysed by his constant tendency to reason and moralise 
Instead of sympathising with distress, lie seems to ask himself. Is 
distress in these circumstances reasonable 1 Rasselas in the happy 
valley reasons acutely on the causes of his discontent : — 

" I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted 
with its proper pleasures, yet I do not feel myself deli^dited. Mun surely 
has some latent sense for which this place affords no gratilicatioii, or lie has 
Bome desires tiistiuct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be 
hapj)y." 

But though he is said to " bewail his miseries with eloquence," 
his lamentations are not very touching : — 

"As he passed through the fields, and saw tlie animals around him, 'Ye,' 
said lie, 'are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among yon, 
burdeni-d with myself; nor do 1, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; /or 
it is not the. felicity of man. I have many distresses from which j'e are free ; 
I fear pain when I do not feel it ; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, 
and sometimes start at evils anticipated : surely the equity of Providence has 
balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments." 

So when the Princess Nekayah loses her favourite maid Pekuah, 
and " sinks down inconsolable in hopeless dejection," she is repre- 
sented as holding her own in an argument with the philosopher 
Imlac as to whether she " does well " to be sorrovyful : — 

1 Tliis propo!:ition is an example of the soniuljns; tautology that Johnson was 
gonieliiiies lietrayed into by his iiowertul coiuniainl of exprf>sion. It nught be 
analvsed and translated into — " Whatever nuikes us tiiiiik more, gives increased 
occupation to our thoughts." Similarly, his famous couplet — 

" Let observarion with extensive view 
Survey inankiiid from Cbiua to Peru," 

Ib rendered — "Let observatiou, with extensive observation, observe mankind 
extensively." 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 425 

"'Bince Peknah was taken from me,' said tlie princess^ 'I have no 
pleasure to reject or to retain. She that lias no one to love or trust, has 
little to hope. She wants the radical principle of happineas. We may, per- 
ha[is, allow, that what satisiaetioii tliis world can afford, must arise from the 
coiijiinctiou of wealtli, knowUdge, and goodness. Wealth is nothing but as 
it IS bestoived, and knowledge nothing hut as it is communicated : they 
must therefore be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to 
impart them ? Goodness affords the only comfort which can he enjoyed 
without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement.'" 

In the expression of impassioned affection he is as "uncouth 
and tumultu()\is" as Garrick described \\\n\ to have been in his 
conjugal endearments. See, for example, the passionate lament of 
the devoted Anninyait on leaving his mistress Ajut : — 

" ' life ! ' says he, ' frail and uncertain ! where shall wretched man find 
tliy resemblance hut in ice floating on the ocean? Ittowi-rson liigh, it sparkles 
from alar, while the storms drive and the waters beat it, the sun melts it 
above, ami the rocks shatter it below. What art thou, deceitful jdeasure ! 
but a sudden blaze streaming from the north, wluch plays a moment on the 
eye, mocks the traveller with the hopes of light, and then vanislies forever? 
What, love, art thou, but a whirlpool, which we approach without know- 
ledge of our danger, drawn on by imperceptible degrees, till we have lost all 
power of resistance and escape ? Till I fixed my eyes on the graces of Ajut, 
while I had not yet called her to the banquet, I was careless as the sleeping 
morse, I was merry as the singers in the stars. Why, Ajut, did I gaze upon 
thy giaces? why, my lair, did 1 call thee to the banquet? Yet, be faith- 
ful, my love, leniember Anuingait, and meet my return with the smiles of 
virginity. I will chase the deer, I will subdue the whale, resistless as the 
frost of darkness, and unwearied as the summer sun. In a few weeks I sliall 
return prosperous and wealthy ; then shall the roe-fish and the porpoise 
feast thy kindred ; the fox and hare shall cover thy couch ; the tough hide 
of the seal shall shelter thee from cold ; and the fat of the whale illuminate 
thy dwelling.'" 

The Ludicrous. — The * Rambler ' is much more serious in its tone 
than the 'Spectator.' There is a greater proportion of gravely 
didactic papers. Not that the 'Rambler' has not considerable 
variety of topics. He does not confine himself to rebuking and 
satirising vices : like the ' Spectator,' he aims at being a censor of 
minor immoralities. Humorous satire of the follies of young men 
and young women of fashion alternates with grave rebuke to scei)- 
ticism, and grave advice to young and old of both sexes and of 
different occupations. But the prevailing tone is serious. 
" His sarcasm is very different from the "gay malevo'ence" of 
Addison, and his humour very different from the good-natured 
sympathy of Steele. When his indignation is roused, his vitu- 
peration is round and unqualified. When he is in a ])leasant mood, 
his humour is broad and arrogant. The most pleasing form of his 
humour is when he is humorous at his own expense. 

The review of ' A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin 
of Evil, by Soame Jenyns,' is a well-known example of his bully- 
ing ridicule : — 



42G FROM 1730 TO 17G0. 

" ITe nails it a Free Enquiry, and indeed his freedom, is. I think, greater 
than his modesty. ThouL^h lie is far iVom the contcn)]ttible arrof^ance, or 
the impious licentiousness, of ijolingliroke, yet he decides too easily up:)n 
questions out of the reacdi of hunuiii determination, with too liitle eon- 
si<lei'aiinn of mortal weakness, and with too much vivacity I'or the necessary 
caution." 

" I am told that this jiamphlet is not the effort of hunger : what can it be 
then but the product of vanity ? and yet how itnn vanity be gratified by 
lihigiarism or transeription ? When the specnlalist finds himselC pn>in))ted 
to iinotlier peifornianc'e, let him consider whether he is about to disburliiun 
ids iniinl or employ his fingers ; and if I might venture to oiler liini a sub- 
ject, I sliould wish that he would solve this question, Why lie that has 
nothing to write, should desire to be a vviiter?" 

The al)ove sliows the Great Moralist in his most unfavourable 
aspect. He api)eare(l thus only when his dee[) prejudices were 
crossed. Many of the 'Kainblers' are full of genuine humour, 
broad and hearty, and of ha[H)y strokes of wit. The following 
account of " The Busy Life of a Young Lady," purporting to bo 
written by herself, is a favourable specimen. Tt forms one of the 
latest ' Raiubk'rs,' and is written in an appropriately simple style, 
as if he had l)een warned of the incongruity of his sounding periods 
on similar occasions before : — 

"Dear Mr Rambler, — I have been four ilays confined to my chamber by a 
cold, whicdi has already kejit me from three l>hiys. idne sales, five shows, 
aiul six card-tables, and put me sc^ventcen visits behind ; and the doctor teda 
my maunna, that if I fret and cry, it will settle in my head, and I shall not 
be tit to be seen these six weeks. Hut, dear Air Ramhlt-r, how can I lielp 
it? At this very time Melissa is dancing with the prettiest gentleman: 
she will breakfast with him to-moirow, and then run to two auctions, and 
hear compliments, and have presents ; then she will be di'essed, and visit, 
and get a ticket to the pliy ; thou go to cards and win, and come home with 
two tlandieaux befora her chair. Dear J\!r lianibler, who can bear it? 

" My aunt has just brought me a bundle of your papers for my amuse- 
ment. She says you are a [dnlosopher, and will teach me to moderate my 
desires, and look upon the world with indillerenee. Bnt, dear Sir. 1 do not 
wish nor intend to moderate my desires, nor can I think it projier to look 
upon the world with iniiillerence, till the world looks with indifference on 
me. I have been forced, however, to sit this morning a whole (piarter of 
an hour with your paper before my face ; but just as my aunt came iu, 
riivllida had brought me a letter frotn J\lr Trip, whi'di I put within the 
leavi's; and read about absence and incons'iliible7ie--<s, and ardour, and irresis- 
tible passion, and eternal cuvslancy, while my ainit imagined that 1 was 
puzzling myself with your ]ihilosophy, and often cried out, wlien she saw 
me fiok confused, 'If there is any word which you do not understand, child, 
I will exi)lain it' 

" Rut their principal intention was to make me afraid of men ; in which 
they succeeded so well for a tim<^, that I durst not look in their faces, or be 
left alone with tliem in a j'arlour ; for they made me fancy that no man ever 
spoke but to deceive, or hxiked but to alhu'e ; that the girl wlio suffered him 
tliat had once stpieezed her hand, to ajjproacli her a second time, was on the 
brink of ruin ; and that she who answerei a billet without consulting her 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 427 

relntions, gave love such power over her, that she would certainly become 
either poor or iiifanious. 

" But I am most at a loss to guess for what purpose they related such 
traffic stories of tlie cruelty, jierfidy, and artifices of men, who, if tliey ever 
were so malicious and destructive, have certninl}' now relormed tlieir manners. 
I have not, since my entrance into the world, found one who does not i^ro- 
fess himself devoted to my service, and ready to live or die as I sh^ll 
comtnand him. They are so far from intending to hurt me, that their 
only contention is who shall be allowed most closely to attend, and most 
frecjuently to treat me ; when different places of entertainment or schenwjs 
of pleasure are nit-ntioned, 1 can see the eye sparkle and the chectc glow 
of him whose proposals obtain my approbation ; he then leads me off in 
triumph, adores my condescension, and congratulates himself that hf has 
lived to the hour of felicity. Are these, Mr Kambler, creatures to be feared ? 
Is it likely that any injury will be done me by those who can enjoy life only 
whde I favour them with my presence ? " 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Description. — Johnson rarely attempts to describe natural 
scenery, and where he does try, as in the description of the 
" Happy Valley," in ' Rasselas,' the clumsiness and poverty of the 
language betray his want of familiarity with the work. His in- 
terest, as he boasted, centred in man. 

Narration. — He never attempted national history. Indeed he 
had a positive dislike to the subject, and rudely jiut down any- 
body that introduced it into conversation. As a biographer, he 
h;ul great reputation in liis own day. His Life of Savage, and his 
Lives of tlie great naval heroes, Blake and Drake (contributed to 
the 'Gentleman's Magazine'), were so much admired and talked 
of, that the king specially desired him to write the lives of hia 
literary predecessors. 

The excellence of his Lives consists not in narrative skill, nor in 
power of showing in varied lights the pronunent features of char- 
acter, but in the numerous maxims, moral and literary, attached 
to the biographical incidents. The narrative is really seconilary. 
Such is his propensity to moralise, that the events in his biog- 
raphies seem reduced to the importance of so many texts. 

Hxjiosition. — Johnson had not the qualifications of a poi)ular 
expositor. His diction was too Latinised, and he did not sufB- 
ciently relieve the dryness of general statements by examples and 
illustiations. 

The only art of expnsition that he excels in is the putting of a 
statement obversely. We have already remarked his love ol anti- 
thesis. In the review of Jenyns (which is also a good measure of 
his logical power) this is partictilarly apparent. 

The shoit political tract entitled "The Patriot" is a very fav- 
ourable specimen of his expository style. He considers with much 



428 FROM 1730 TO 1760. 

vigour the various distinguishing marks of a true patriot, what 
he will do, and what he will not do; and then, obverocly, "what 
will prove a man to be not a patriof." 

In ex|ionii(ling various delusive signs of patriotism, he proceeds 
almost entirely Wy npetition in pointed forms, direct and obverse. 
The following is a specimen: — 

"Some claim a place in tlie list of patriots by an acrimonious and unre- 
mitting npjiositioTi to tiie Court. 

"This niaik is by no mems infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily in- 
cluilc(i in rebellion. A imm may liiite his king, yet not I'lve his countrv. 
He tliat has been refused a reasonable or unreason;il)le recjuest, who tliinks 
his merit underrated, and sees his iniluence deelinini;, begins soon to talk of 
natural e(inality, the absurdity of many made for one, the ori^dnal oonip;ict, 
the foundation of authority, and the majesty of the peojile. As his politi'-al 
melancholy inereases, he ttdls, and pi-rliaiis dreams, of the ailvanccs of llie 
prerimati\e, and tin- dangers of arbitrary power; yet ids desii^n in all hia 
declainaiion is not to benefit his country, but to gratify liis malice." 

Even this, which is in his later style, and is much more simple and 
concrete than the ' Rambler,' would have been more popularly 
effective if enlivened by examples. Macaulay would certainly have 
produced cases in point, if any were to be had. The following 
extract is more lively towards the end : — 

" It is the cpnility of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all 
secret machinations, and to see public danireisat a distanr*. The true lover 
of his country is rca<ly to connnunicate liis fiars, and to sound the alarm 
whenever lie pert^eives the approach of mischit-f. ISnt he sounds no alarm 
when there is no enemy; he ne\er tenilies his conn irymcn till he is terri- 
fied himself. The patriotism, theiefore, may be justly doubted of him, 
■who" [bitter, we may justly doulit the patriotism of him that] " professes 
to be disturbed by incredulities ; who tells that the last peace was obt.dncd 
by biibin-i the Princess of Wales; that the King is graspini^ at arbitiary 
power ; and that, because the French in their new conquests enjoy their 
own laws, lhei3 is a design at Court of abolishing in England the trial by 
juries." 

Ptrsiiasiolu — Johnson's faulty exposition diminished his influ- 
ence with the generality of readers. The magisterial air of his 
•Rambler' probably awed many into reading him with respect, 
and trying to profit by his doctrine ; but the dry ab.stract char- 
acter of the exposition must have made the perusal anything but 
a labour of love. 

His political tracts must have exercised the very minimum of 
influence for the productions of so great a writer. He was the last 
man in the world to conciliate opposition, and his strong powers 
of argument were warped by prejudice. His 'Taxation no Tyr- 
anny,' wiitten to defend the taxation of the Ameiicun cohuiisis 
against their will, is at once overbearing and soidiistical. It 
might inliaine and iiubitter i)artisaiis, but it was too abusive and 
too unreasonable to make converts. 



THEOLOGY. 429 

OTHER WRITERS. 

THEOLOGY. 

At the beginning of this period the controversy with the Deists 
was at its height. Tindal's ' Christianity as old as the Creation' 
had wrouglit the excitement to a frenzy. There was no lack of 
replies in various degrees of power; Leland enumerates as "valu- 
able treatises" that appeared within the year 1730, works by Dr 
Thomas Burnet, Dr Waterland, Mr Law, Mr Jackson, Dr Stebbing, 
]\lr Balguy, James — afterwards Dr — Foster, and a " pastoral letter " 
by Bishop Sherk)cL There were many others. One of the most 
elaborate defences was made by Dr John Conybeare (1691-1757), 
afterwards Bishop of Bristol. This is praised by Waiburton as 
"one of the best reasoned books in the world." 

The Deists were reinforced by Thomas Morgan nnd Thomas 
Chubb. Morgan published in 1737 'The Moral Philosopher, a 
dialogue between Pliilalethes, a Christian Deist, and Tlieophanes, 
a Christian Jew.' He does not hold with Tindal that the Chris- 
tian republication of the law of nature is superfluous. He holds 
that Christ's promulgation of "the true and genuine principles of 
nature and reason" "were such as the people had never heard or 
thought of before, and never would have known, without such an 
instructor, such means and opportunities of knowledge." He calls 
himself a Christian Deist. But he repudiates both miracles and 
prophecy : Clirist, he holds, attained moral truth by " the strength 
and superiority of his own natural faculties," and in that sense 
may be said to have had the light of revelation ! He attacks 
Judaism. "He representeth the law of Moses as 'having neither 
truth nor goodness in it, and as a wret.-htd scheme of superstition, 
blindness, and slavery, contrary to all reason and common-sense, 
set up under the specious popular pretence of a divine instruction 
and revelation from Cod.' And he endeavours to prove that this 
was the sentiment of St Paul." Further, he attacks the preaching 
'of the aposiles — "pretends that they preached different gospels, 
and that the New Testament is a jumble of inconsistent religions." 
Morgan was specially refuted by Joseph Hallet, Dr John Chap- 
man, and Dr Leland. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), was a self- 
educated man, journeyman to a tallow-chandler, yet much taken 
notice of for his "strong natural j)art.s and acuteness" by wealthy 
patrons of letters. In his 'True Gospel of Jesus Christ asserted,' 
and in his ' Discourse on Miracles,' he takes much the same ground 
as Morgan. He left for publication after his death a variety of 
tracts on the most important subjects of religion. In these tracts, 
among other sceptical views, he expresses uncertainty regarding a 
future lif& 



430 ■ FROM 1730 TO ITCO. 

Among tlie Deists it is usual to reckon Lord T'oHngbroke. His 
philos.)i)liical works, containing his arguments against orthodox 
theology, were not published till 1754. l>y that time the excite- 
ment had die I down. His declamations against religion, which 
went far beyond all previous attacks, were replied to by Leland 
and Warburton. 

]>y far the ablest of the Christian Apologists was Joseph But- 
ler (1692-1752), liishop of Ihistol and Dean of St Paul's. His 
'Analogy' (1736) is so compact and exhaustive, that it has super- 
seded and destroyed the reptitation of all the replies to the Deists 
then current. It was directed chiefly against Tindal's ' Chris- 
tianity as old as the Creation.' In the first part he proves elabor- 
ately that there is a JSLirnl Governor of the universe who has 
l)laced man in a state of probation, and rebuts any argument from 
the incomprehensibility of parts of the scheme of the world to 
the untruth of the leading doctrines of natural theology. In the 
second part he maintains Christianity to be a divine republication 
of natural religion, and marshals the various evidences. The work 
is most thorough. It is a sagacious digest of all that had been 
said in the course of tlie controversy. "It is no paradox to say 
that the merit of the ' An;ilogy ' lies in its want of originality. It 
came (1736) towards the end of the duistical jjeiio I. It is the 
result of twenty years' study — the very twenty years during which 
the deistiral notions formed the atmosphere which educated people 
breathed, 'i'he objections it meets are not new and un.scasoned 
objections, but such as had worn well, and had Ixirne the rub of 
controversy, because they were genuine. And it will be equally 
hard to find in the 'Analogy' any toi)ic in reply which had not 
been suggested in the j>am[ihlets and sermons of the preceding 
halt-century." " Butler's eminence over his contemporary apolo- 
gists is seen in nothing more than in that superior sagacity which 
rejects the use of any jilea that is not entitled to consideration 
singly. In the other evident ial books of the time, we find a mis- 
eel aneous crowd of suggestions of very various value ; never 
fanciful but often trivial; undeniable, but weak as proof of the 
point they are brought to prove." ^ The matter of the work must 
indeed be of sterling value to retain it in the place it lias perma- 
nently assumed as a text-book of Natural Theology. The style, as 
a style designed for general reading, could hardly be worse. It 
would hardly be possible to make a book more abstruse and difli- 
cult. This prol)al)ly arises partly, as Mr Pattison points out, from 
his aiming at logical precision, at arranging the arguments so that 
each shall have its exact weight, and no more. He is probably 
entitled to the merit of precision. Put his sins a. ainst simplicity, 
against ready intelligibility, are heinous. His sentences are long 

1 J\lr ratli.sou — E.-saj's and Reviews, pp 287, 289. 



THEOLOGY. 431 

and intricate, he studies to express himself in the most abstract 
form possible, and there are very few examples or illustrations to 
relieve the dry press of general statements. His defects as a 
popular expositor are most vividly felt when he is compared 
Mith Paley, who may be said to have interpreted him to the 
multituile. 

In William Warhurton (1698-1779), Bishop of Gloucester, we 
see a controversialist very different from the abstract and dignified 
Butler, a bold man, of great intellectual force and wide erudition. 
In his youth he was article! to an attorney. He took orcleis in 
1727, and soon after obtained the rectory of Brand Broughton, in 
Lincoln. His first work was, in 1736, on the alliance between 
Cliurch and State. His masterpiece is ' The Divine Legation of 
Moses' (1738). The leading idea, which immediately involved 
hiin in controversy, is the paradox that there is no mention of a 
future state in the Old Testament, and that this, so far fioni being 
an argument against its divine origin, is an argument in favour. 
With much learning and ingenuity he seeks to establish that no 
ruler except Moses has ever kept a people in subjection without 
the sanction of punishments in a future life, and argues that Moses 
could not have done so without sujiernatural assistance. Besides 
this great work, he published sernn)ns and controversial tracts 
chiefly in defence of the Legation, and in refutation and abuse 
of Bolingbroke. One of his most famous exploits was his defence 
of Pojie against the charge of Deism. Poi)e, it is said, had been 
led on the ice by his friend Bolingbroke, and had adopted doubt- 
ful tenets without being fully aware of their bearing. Warburton 
went opportunely to the rescue, and proved a redoubtable chani- 
piiin. In Warburton force predominated very much over judg- 
ment. He delighted in upholding paradoxes and hopeless causes 
• — arguing with great ingenuity, eking out his argument with 
plentiful abuse, and, when violently excited, even going the 
length of thieatening his opponent with the cudgel. His com- 
mand of language, if used with greater discretion, would have 
given him one of the highest places in literature. His style is 
simple, emphatic, and racy ; diversified with clever quotations 
and pungent sarcasm (often taking the form of irony). 

Dr John Leland (1691-1766), a Presbyterian minister in Dublin, 
acquired considerable fame in the deistical controversy, which he 
made the chief occujiation of his life. He wrote separate works 
against Tindal, Morgan, Dodwell, and Bolingbroke. His ' View 
of the Deistical Writers' (1754), a brief work written in a spirit 
of praiseworthy moderation, is still a text-book for students of 
divinity. His great work, ' On the Advantage and Necessity of a 
Christian Revelation' (1764), is long since forgotten. 

Dr Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), also a Dissenting minister, 



432 FKOM 1730 TO 1760. 

jmblislied between 1730 and 1757 hi.s voluminous 'Crerlibility of 
the Gosi)el History.' This vast quarry of learning supitlicd Pak-y 
with the material for his more neat and substantial ' Evidences.' 

Dr James Foster > (1697-1753), another Dissenting minister 
— wlio, when he preached in London, drew wits and beaux to 
hear him, making something like the sensation afterwards pro- 
duced by Edward Irving — took part against the Deists in various 
tracts. 

While the dcistical controversy was raging, sacred literature 
was not wholly neglected. Bishop Robert Lowth (1710-1787) 
acquired great fame as a Biblical critic, translator, and commen- 
tator. Dr Kennicot (1718-1783) began in 1753 his great work of 
collating the M8S. of the Hebrew Bible. Bishop Thomas New- 
ton (1704-1782), the editor of Milton, published in 1754 his famous 
'Dissertations on the Prophecies.' Archbishop Seeker (d. 1768), 
a man of somewhat eventful life, wrote lectures on ihe Catechism 
of the Church of England, which were widely circulated in their 
day. Bishop Edmund Law (1703-1787), who edited the works of 
Locke, and whose life is written by Paley, published ' Considera- 
tions on the Theory of Religion, and Reflections on the Life and 
Character of Christ.' 

Three or four devotional writings (or works in "liortatory the- 
ology," as Dr .Johnson calls them) that were w-ritten during this 
period sti'l hold their ground. Law's 'Serious Call to a Holy 
Life ' (William Law, 1686-1761) is remarkable, as the book that 
is said to have converted .Johnson fom youtliful levity. Watts's 
' On Improvement of tlie Mind ' (Dr Isaac Watts, 1674-1748, a 
youthful prodigy, a well-known author of religious hymns) was 
published about the beginning of this period. Doddridge's ' Rise 
and Progress of Ileligion in the Soul ' (Dr Philip Doddridge, 
1702-1751, one of the most distinguished of Nonconformist divines, 
and author of numerous religious works) was published in 1745. 
Hervey's 'Meditations on the Tombs' (James Hervey, 1714- 
1758, took part against Bolingbroke, and had with Sandemau 
a controversy of his own concerning the nature of faith), uiion 
its publication in 1746, achieved immediate popularity, and is 
still to be found in nearly every Scotch household — its somewhat 
bombastic ornaments being no blemish in the eyes of uncritical 
readers. 

The most celebrated pulpit orators of this generation, with the 
excei)tion i)erha|>s of James Foster, belonged to the Methodists. 
The germ of the Methodist Society was the "Holy Club" at 
Oxford, which, in 1732, included the two Wesleys, John and 
Charles, Whitefield, and "Meditation" Hervey, and drew inspi- 
ration from the author of the ' Serious Call,' the spiritual father 
1 All these lliiee D.D.'s received tlie honour from Aberdeen. 



PIIILOSOI'IIY. 433 

of John Wesley. The name ]\Iethodist was first given to Charles 
Wesley,' and from him extended to his comjianions. 

John Wesley (1703-1791), the son of itn English clergyman, 
studied at Oxford and took orders. After ofliciaring for S(mie 
years as curate to his father, he returned to Oxford, Mas intro- 
duced by his brother Charles to the young "Methodists," and 
eiitere I into their enthusiasm. He spent two years in evangel- 
ising the newly established colony of Georgia (1735-37). Eeturn- 
ing to England, he found himself one of the leaders of an impetu- 
ous religious awakening. In 1741 he and Whitefield agreed to 
separate. Wesley was comparatively a cold man, with a genius 
for ruling, and strove nither to restrain the impetuosity of his fol- 
lowers, acting as a drag upon their estrangement from the Church 
of England. He did not permit the independent organisation of 
Methodism till 1784. His preaching had not the melting power 
of Whitefield's. It would seem to have been more strenuous; at 
least it had the peculiar effect of throwing excitable hearers into 
convulsions. 

George Whitefield (1714-1770), the founder of Calvinistic :\Ieth- 
odisrn, was celebrated for the marvellous ])0wer of his oratory. 
He preached in many parts of Englunil, America, and Scotland. 
Everybody is familiar with the anecdotes of his preaching ; with 
his drawing tears from the eyes of the Bristol colliers, and money 
from the pocket of Benjamin Franklin. His published sermons 
are far from equal to his reputation ; the charm seems to have 
been in his voice, elocution, and gesture. 

The founders of the Secession Church in Scotland, the two 
brothers, Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, were also noted preachers, 
especially Ebenezer. They were deposed by the General Assembly 
in 1740. The chief cause of the quarrel with the Established 
Church was the law of patronage. They are usually spoken of as 
heading in Scotland a religious revival such as Wesley and White- 
field began in England. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

The present is quite a flowering period in ethical and meta- 
physical literature. Hutcheson was in full vigour at the com- 
mencement of it; Edwards, Hartley, and Hume were publishing 
before it was far gone ; Price and Adam Smith began to publish 
just before its close. 

Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747), a native of Ireland, a student 
at Glasgow, received in 1729 the appointment of Professor of 

^ Charles Wesley was six years older tlian Hervey and Whitefield, and was 
the originator of the Club. Wlien he introduced Ins brother John to the Club, 
John, being a senior of about thirty years ol age, was looked up to with resptx-t, 
and soon became their leader. 

2 G 



434 FROM 1730 TO 1760. 

Moral Philosophy in G]a<?go\v. He usually receives the credit ol 
having by his eloquence and enihusiasm given the first great 
stimulus to mental i>hilo.so|ihy in Scotland. His chief works were 
— ' Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,' 
first published in 1725 ; ' Esfay on the Nature and Conduct of the 
Passions and Affections,' 1728; 'A System of Moral Philosoi>hy,' 
published in 1755, after his death, containing the completest ex- 
position of his views. He aiiopted and worked out Shaftesbury's 
suggestion of a Moral Sense. He maintained the existence of dis- 
interested feelings. He placed the Highest Good in the pleasures 
of sympathy, moral goi>dness, and piety — exalting these against 
"creature comforts," Epicurean "enjoyment of life." His style 
was copious and glowing. He tries to engage the attention of the 
reader by great abundance of examples and comparisons. 

David Hartley (1705-1757), a physician, was the first to bring 
into ]irominence the doctrine of the association of ideas, explaining 
by this theory the growth of moral sentiments. He is still more 
famous as the first English writer to biing into prominence the 
doctrine that the brain and the nerves are the instruments of the 
mind. Not much has been added to his proofs. He held that 
the impressions of sense are conveyed along the nerves by a vibra- 
tory movement. His 'Observations on Man' was published in 
1749. The style of this work is sober, and possesses few attrac- 
tions, it is, however, sutticiently clear, and the doctrines nob 
being abstruse, it is, for a psychological work, comparatively easy 
reading. 

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is notable in Philosophy for his 
arguments against the so-called Ereedom fiif the Wiil, and in The- 
ology for his defence of the doctrine of Original Sin. He was born 
in Windsor, Connecticut, became a preacher, was closely connected 
with the great religious revival, though himself too feelJe and 
awkward to address multiiudes, conducted a ndssion to the In- 
dians, and died President of New Jersey College. His 'Inquiry 
into the Freedom of the Will' was published in 1754; his work 
on Original Sin in 1758. He was of a severe ascetic lurn. He was 
driven from his first charge as a minister in consequence of his 
rigorous purging of the sacramental tables. His controversial 
acuteiiess and subtlety in drawing distinctions entitle his works to 
their high rank. He had little turn for style. Dry and precise, 
without either felicity or ornament, his writings are calculated to 
repel all but hard students of their particular sul>jects. 

David Hume (1711-1776) is in this generation what Berkeley, 
Locke, and IlobliCs were in theirs. He belonged to a good Scot- 
tish family. His stioiig literary turn ai)peared at an early age. 
He trietl to learn first law and then commerce, but found both 
uncongenial He spent three years in France at Ilheims aud at 



niiLosoriiY. 435 

the Jesuit College of La Fleche. Immediately thereafter, in 1739, 
he published his 'Treati.se of Human Nature.' Jn 1741-42 ap- 
peared his 'Essays Moral and Political'; in 1748 his 'Inquiry 
concerning Human Understanding'; in 1751 his 'Inquiry con- 
cerning tlie Principles of Morals' ; from 1754 to 1762 the various 
Vdlumes of his ' History of England.' While these were in course 
of preparation he did not make his living by literature alone. 
During one year he had charge of an insane young nobleman ; for 
two years he was secretary to General St Clair, accompanying him 
on an expedition to the coast of France and on a mission to Turin. 
Thereafter he had important appnintments in the service of the 
Government. From 1763 to 1766 he was Secretary to the British 
Embassy at Paris, and on his return home became Uniier-Secre- 
tary of State for the Northern Department. The last six years 
of his life he spent in the pleasant society of Edinburgh. His 
' Dialogues on Natural Religion ' were published by his nephew in 
1779, three years after his death. Hume is described as a corpu- 
lent man, "of hap})ily-balanced temper," "of simple, unafi'ected 
nature, and kindly dis[)Osition." He says of himself — " I was, I 
say, a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, 
social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little 
susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions." 
He was not a very productive writer. He did not so much teem 
with ideas ; he rather gave himself to the steady elaboration of a 
few. His philosophical writings, whatever may be their scientific 
value, have the merit of being clear and consistent. He was very 
painstaking with his c<imposition. His manuscripts bear evidence 
of the most careful revision and fastidious chuii'e of words and 
phrases. Especially was he anxious to weed his diction of Scotti- 
cisms, inviting criticism and correction with a genuine desire to 
profit thereby. He offends cliiefly by using terms peculiar to 
Scotch law. The great beauty of his style is its perspicuity. His 
choice of words is often very apt, and the combinations felicitous. 
The heavy character of his subjects is enlivened by a constant dry 
sparkle of antithesis, and occasional touches of quiet sarcasm and 
humour. He is highly eulogised by Dr Nathan Drake — "The 
Essays of Hume, in fact, sometimes present the reader with the 
grace and sweetness of Addison, accom[ianied with a higher finish- 
ing and more accurate tact in the arrangement and structure of 
periods; so that no language is more clear and live'y, more neat 
and chaste, more durably and delicately pleading to the ear, than 
what may be produced from the Lest portions of those elaborate 
but very sceptical disquisitions." 

Adam Smith and Price published ethical works towards the 
close of this period, but they belong properly to the next gen- 
eration. 



436 FUOM 173U TO 17C0. 



HISTORY. 

The most famous historical work of this period is Hume's ' His- 
tory of England,' from the earliest times down to the licvolution. 
The author's original idea was to write this History from the 
Union of the Crowns to the accession of George I. He never 
brought it further down than tlie Revolution ; and when he hud 
brought it to that point he enlarged his scheme in the other direc- 
tion — went back to the invasion of Julius Ctesar, and carried down 
the narrative to the Union. The work was highly popular. It is 
sometimes compared with the ' History of England' by Macaulay, 
who began where Hume left off, and who is said to have been 
ambitious of proving a worthy continuator of the elder historian. 
The style, though more abstract ami much less spirited than 
Macaulay's, and though the writer aimed at being " concise after 
the manner of the ancients," was brilliant and sparkling as com- 
paied with the ordinary historical performances of that or of prior 
date. There was also in the work a great feature of novelty. 
Hume was the first to mix with the history of public transactions 
accounts of the condition of the people, and of the state of arts 
and sciences. Although these supplementary chapters of his are 
very imperfect, and though he had neither materials for the task 
nor a just conception of the difficulty of it, still the little that he 
gave was a pleasing innovation. Like Macaulay, he is accused of 
partiality in his explanation of events, but in the opposite direc- 
tion. He is accused of giving a favourable repiesentation of the 
despotic conduct of the Stuarts, and of trying to throw discredit 
on the po[)ular leaders. 

A ' Complete History of England,' also from the invasion of 
Julius Csesar, but brought down to a later period than Hume's — 
to 1748 (afterwards to 1765), was published by Tobias Smollett, 
the novelist, in 1758. A narrative from Smollett's jien could not 
fail to l)e attractive. But such a work written in fourteen months 
could hardly compete in manner, and still less in matter, with the 
eight years' careful labour of Hume. The style is fluent and loo.^e, 
possessing a careless vigour where the subject is naturally exciting, 
but composed too hastily to rise above dulness in the record of dry 
transactions. As regards matter, the historian can make no pre- 
tension to original research. He executed the book as a piece of 
hack-work for a London bookseller, availing himself freely of 
previous publications, and taking no pains to bring new facts to 
light. He was in too great a hurry even to compare and cheek 
authorities : the history is said to be full of errors and inconsist- 
encies. The concluding part of the work is sometimes printed as 
a continuation of Humei 



HISTORY. 437 

Among 'the minor historians of the period were Thomas Carte 
(b. 1686), an intense Jacubite, secretary to Bishop Atterbury, 
author of a 'General History of England' (1747), ^^^ ^^ ^ ' ^^^ 
tory of the Life of James, Duke of Orinond ' ; Nathaniel Hooke 
(d. 1763), who assisted the famous Duchess of Marlborough in the 
vindication of her life, compiler of a 'History of Rome' (1733- 
177 1), remarkable as taking tlie side of the plebeians; William 
Harris (1720-1770), author of memoirs of James I., Charles I., 
Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II. ; and the compilers of a ' Uni- 
versal History,' published about 1760 — namely, three Scotsmen 
(Archibald Bower, John Campbell, and William Guthrie)/ 
George Sale (translator of the Koran), and George Psalmanazar, 
the pretended native of Formosa. With these we may reckon 
Lord Hervey, the Sporus of Pope, whose 'Memoirs of the Reign 
of George II., from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline,' 
were published by Mr Croker in 1848. 

The writer of the ' Life of Cicero,' a historical biography, Dr 
Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), receives high praise for his style 
from Dr Nathan Drake, when that work is said to be " the earliest 
classical production which we possess in the department of history." 
This, however, is considerably modified in what follows : — 

" Its reputation, however, as a specimen of fine writing, is on the decline. 
. . . Tlie chief defects of the composition of the ' Life of Cicero ' have 
arisen from the labour bestowed upon it. Tiie sentences are too often, in 
their construction, pedantic and stiti', owing in a great measure to the per- 
petual ailoption of circundocutions, in order to avoid ciistnmary pluases and 
modes of expression. The autlior lias indeed, upon this jilan, given a kind 
of verbose dignity to his style ; but, at the same time, frequently sacrifici'd 
ease, perspicuity, and spirit. In grammatical construction, he is tor the 
most part ]iure and correct ; but in Ids choice of woids he has exhibited 
frequent marks of defective taste. He is occasionally elegant and precise, 
but more commonly appears majestic, yet encumbered, struggling under the 
very ninss of diciion wliich he has laboured to accumulate. He has con- 
tributed, however, to improve English composition by atibrding examples of 
unusual correctness in the construction of his sentences, and of that round- 

j ness, plenitude, iind harmony of period lor which his favourite Cicero bus 

' been so universally renowned." 

Middleton was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, an im- 
placable enemy of the Master, Richard Bentley, with whom he had 
several lawsuits, and whose New Testament he attacked with ex- 
treme bitterness. He wrote several works of some note in their 
day. He is severely handled by De Quincey, who calls him " the 
most malignant of a malignant crew," rejoices that his gross unac- 

1 Mentioned by Boswell as a political writer of such power, that Government 
" thought it worth their while to keep him quiet by a pension." He was one of 
the first authors by profession, unconnected with politics, though he did not 
scniple to enlarge his income by taking a side. He is praised as the lirst hisioiiau 
that made extensive searclies among oiigiiial documents. 



438 FIMM 1730 TO 1760. 

knowledged plagiarisms were detected, denounces him for being a 
free-thinker all the time that he drew his bread from the Church, 
and says tliat his style "at one time obtained credit through the 
caprice of a fashionable critic." 

The antiquaries of the ])eriod were, — William Stukeley (1687- 
1765), author of an Itinerary; Dr Thomas Birch (1705-1765), an 
industrious and faithful Dryasdust, associated with Sale in editing 
Ijayle's Dictionary, writer of hiograpliical memoirs, editor of .AFilton, 
of Dr Rol)ert B'>yle, of Thurloe's State Papers, ic. ic. ; Thomas 
Blackwell (1701-1757), Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, 
a great enthusiast, who gave a new impulse to classical studies in 
the North, and \\ hose ' IMemoirs of the Court of Augustus ' was 
ridiculed by Johnson for its affectations of style. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), the famous di=;cnverer of the 
identity of lightning with the electrical s[)ark, wrote several mis- 
cellaneous papers, scientific and political, which have doubtless 
had no small influence in forming American style. His chequered 
life is pretty generally known. He made his fortune as a printer, 
solely by his own sagacity, industry, ami prudence, and bore a 
distinguished part in the assertion of American independence, act- 
ing as ambassador to France. His writings are remarkal)le for 
simplicity, terseness, and force. Both the language and the illus- 
trations fit the meaning with emphatic closeness. He affects no 
graces of style : a hard-headed, practical man, he seeks to convey 
his meaning as briefly and as emphatically as possible. Thus — 

"Be studious in your profession, and yon will be learneil. Be industri- 
ous and t'rugiil, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will 
be lieiilthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy ; at least you 
will, hy such conduct, stand the best chance for such consui^uences." 

"He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face." 

" He tint for giving a draught of water to a thirsty person should expect 
to be paid with a good plantation, would be modest in his demands com- 
pared with those wlio think they deserve heaven for the little good they do 
on earth." 

A writer of a very different stamp is William Melmoth 
(1710-1799), the elegant translator of Pliny and Cicero, and uulhor 
of ' Letters of Sir Thomas Fitzosborne on several Subjects ' (1742). 
*' The style of Melmoth," says Dr Nathan Drake, " both in his 
original and translated works, is easy, perspicuous, and elegant. 
He is more correct in grammatical construction, more select in his 
choice of words, than any preceding writer; but he is sometimes 
languid and verbose. His taste, which was very refined and pure, 
has seldom permitted him to adopt ornament not congenial to the 



MISCELLAlfEOUS WRITERS. 439 

subject of discussion, and his diction is therefore singularly chaste 
and free from inHation." 

James Harris (1709-1780), a man of fortune, who rose to be a 
Lord of the Treasury, was celebrated as a writer on Art, Grammar, 
and Logic. His most famous work is entitled ' Hei mes, or a Phil- 
osdphicai Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar.' 

Dr John Brown (1715-1766), a friend of Warburton and Pope, a 
critic of the Eail of Shaftesbury, is praised by Wordsworth as the 
fiiit to ai)i)reciate and describe the scenery of the English Lakes. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



fEOM 1760 TO 179a 



EDMUND BURKE, 
1728— 1797. 

Until the publication of Mr Mackniglit's 'Life of Burke,' the 

biograi)hies of this eminent orator, writer, and statesman were full 
of minute errors. Contradictory statements prevailed concerning 
the date and place of his birth, the religion of his parents, his 
early education, his empli^yments before he entered Parliament, 
and many other points wherein assurance is to be desired regard- 
ing a man of such eminence. 

He was born in a house on Arran Quay, Dublin, most probably 
on January 12, 1728 or 1729.^ His supposed ancestors were 
wealthy citizens of Limerick, who adhered to the Catholic faith, 
and lost their possessions in the time of Cromwell. His father 
was a solicitor in good practice, and belonged to the Protestant 
communion. His mother's name was Nagle ; she was a Koman 
Catlu>lic. It is of some consequence to note that Burke's earliest 
years were spent under the care of his Catiiolic uncles, who famed 
some land of their own in the south of Ireland, and that his school- 
master (Abraham Shackleton, of Ballitore, in Kildare) was a 
Quaker. He had thus the best possible training in the toleration 
of ditferent creeds. From 1 743 to 1748 he was a student in 
Trinity College, Dublin. He was too desultory to excel in the 
studies of the place ; he had occasional fits of application to mathe- 
matics and logic ; and he was awarded a scholarship in classics : 
but he did not carry off the highest honours in any one department. 

^ 1728 according to the register of Trinity College ; 1729 according to the tablet 
in Beacouslield Church. 



EDMUND BURKE. 44 I 

Not that, like his contemporary the gay Goldsmith, he wasted his 
time in frolic and dissipation; but he gave himself up to miscel- 
laneous rea ling, esjiecially of poetry, to verse-making, and to day- 
dreaming. In 1747 he entered his name at the Middle Temple, 
and in 1750 went to London to keep law terms; but in this new 
study he shewed equally little diligence, and for some years is to 
be conceived " as a young Templar, in delicate health, fond of 
jaunting about England, fund of literature, and anything but fond 
of law." 1 

His first literary productions appeared in 1756. 'A Vindication 
of Natural Society,' intended as a [jarody of Bolingbroke's reason- 
ings on religion, is sometimes praised as a successful piece of 
mimicry ; but it contains more of tlie real Burke than of the sham 
Bolingbroke. It may be viewed as an exercise in the style that 
the author ultimately adopted as his habitual manner of composi- 
tion. The 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful' has much less 
glow and sweep of style ; the writer's flow of words seems to be 
painfully embarrassed by the necessity of observing order and 
pro[iortion of statement. In 1757 he married. The same year 
he wrote 'An Account of European Settlements in America,' and 
an unfinished ' Essay towards an Abridgment of English History.' 
Next year he suggested to Dodsley the ' Annual Begister,' a yearly 
summary of notable facts. He is supposed to have written the 
whole of this annual for 1758 and for 1759, and to have contrib- 
uted the political summary for a good many years after. 

In 1759 he was introduced more intimately to political life. In 
that year he became connected with "Single-Speech" Hamilton as 
private secretary, or, as he was nicknamed, "jackal," his previous 
studies making him well qualified to act as political tutor. He 
accompanied Hamilton to Ireland in 1761, and is sujiposed to have 
been the original prompter of the eflbrts then instituted by Gov- 
ernment to relax the inhuman penal laws against the Roman 
Catholics. In 1765, his connection with Hamilton having ended 
in an open rupture, he was fortunate enough to obtain the higher 
appointment of private secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord 
Rockingham, who continued his friend and patron to the last. 

He entered Parliament in 1766 as member for Wendover. Our 
space will not allow us to trace his career minutely. During his 
first session he supported Rockingham's conciliatory policy towards 
the irritated colonies of North America in speeches that fairly 
rivalled the eloquence of the veteran Chatham. Thereafter he 
vigorously defended this policy both in Parliament and out of it, 
with s[ieech and with pamphlet, through several stormy years until 
the final rupture and Declaration of Independence. ' Observations 

1 The story that in 1751 he applied for the Professorship of Logic in Glasgow 
is discredited as absurd, and its origin sufficiently accounted for. 



442 FROM 17G0 TO 1790. 

on a late Pu1>lication, intituled The Present State of the Nation,' 
a reply to a joreiniad supposed to be written by Clrenviile, ai>peared 
in 1769; 'Thoughts ou Present Discontents' in the following 
year. His patron, igo of the colonies was widely acknowleilgeci 
In 1 77 I he was appointed agent for the State of New York, with 
a salary of ^S°° a year ; and in 1774 he was returned to Parliri- 
ment free of expense by the [)eace-loving merchants of BristoL 
llis famous s[)eech "on conciliation with America" was made in 
support of certain rCvSolutions that he introduced in 1775. 

In 177S he supported Lord Nugent's proposals for freeing the 
trade of Ireland from certain restrictiona The credit of this 
action — which, indeed, " the impartial historian " would have 
expected from any Irishman of moderately patriotic feelings — - 
is not a little diminished by his factious opposition to Pitt's 
endeavours in 1785 to procure the abolition of the remaining 
restrictions. 

In 1780 he brought forward his great scheme of economical 
reform. The ministers of the Crown had at their disposal a large 
nnmber of lucrative sinecures, nominal posts in the royal house- 
hold, and suchlike. On this patronage — a gigantic system of 
corruption, used by the Government to bribe adherents — Burke 
proposed to make consi^lerable curtailments. Only a small part 
of his scheme was carried. 

About the same time his attention was powerfully drawn to 
Indian misgovernment by his kinsman William Burke. In 1781 
he sat on a committee of inquiry. In 1783 he assisted in conc<pct- 
ing Fox's India Bill, which proposed to abolish the East India 
Company and vest the government in seven commissioners ap- 
pointed for life. Shortly afterwards he opposed the more consti- 
tutional and judicious Bill introduced by Pitt. One of the most 
memorable events of his life was the conduct of the impeachment 
of Warren Hastintis for tyrannical abuse of his power as Governor 
of India. The tiial lasted from 1788 to 1794, judgment not being 
pronounced till 1796. 

^luch has been said regarding his views of the French Revolu- 
tion, and his cimsequent sppar.ition from his political associates. 
In a debate on the Army Estimates in 1790, Fox took oceasion to 
praise the French Guards, because, during the late commotions, 
they had sided, not with the Court, but with the people; they 
"hal shown tl'at men, by becoming soldiers, did not cease to be 
citizens." In the course of the same debate Burke (iepre<ated this 
praise, called them " not citizens, but base hireling mutineers, and 
mercenary sordid deserters," and warmly asserted that rather than 
give the least ccmntenance in England to the distemper of France, 
he would " abandon his best friends, and join with his worst 
enemies." Afterwards, when the leading members of his party 



EDMUND BUEKE. 443 

avowel a decided sympathy with the Revolution, he openly and 
violently broke with them, and emplnyed his eloquence in decrying 
that event with such effect that he has lieen called tli^ leader of 
the reactionary movement throughout Europe. His most famous 
writings on the subject are ' liefle«tions on the French Revolution,' 
1790 ; ' An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,' 1791 ; and 
' Letters on a Regicide Peace,' 1796. 

In 1794 he retired from Parliament. Shortly after, he sustained 
a great blow in the death of his only son, who liad ju.^t been elected 
for Malton in his stead. Towards the end of the same year he 
received a })ension from Government ; and the apparent inconsist- 
ency of an economical reformer accepting such a boon having been 
attacked by the Duke of Bedford in the House of Lords, he re- 
plied in his famous "Letter to a Noble Lord," February 1795. 
He died at Beaconsfield on July 8, 1797. 

Burke's appearance is described by Mr Macknight in the follow- 
ing terms : " Tall, and apparently endowed v/ith much vigour of 
body, his presence was noble anl his ajipearance prepos.sessing. In 
later years, the first peculiarity which caught the eye as Buike 
walked forwards, as his custom was, to speak in the middle of 
the House, were his spectacles, which, from shortness of sight, 
seemed never absent from his face. . . . His dress, though 
not slovenly, was by no means such as vvou'd have suited a leader 
of fashion. He had the air of a man who was full of thought and 
care, and to whom his outward appearance was not of the slightest 
consideration. But as a set-otf to this disadvantage, there was in 
his whole deportment a sense of personal dignity an I habitual 
self-respect. . . . His brow was massive. . . , They who 
knew how amiable Burke was in his private life, and how warm 
and tender was the heart within, might expect to see these softer 
qualities depicted on his countenance. But they would have been 
disappointed. It was not usual at any time to see his face 
mantling with smiles ; he decidedly looked like a great man, but 
not like a meek or gentle one. . . . All his troubles were 
impressed on his working features, and gave them a somewhat 
severe expression, which deepened as he advanced in years, until 
they became to some observers unpleasantly hard. The marks 
about the jaw, the firmness of the lines about the mouth, the stern 
glance of the eye, and the furrows on the expansive forehead, were 
all the sad ravages left by the difficulties and sorrows of genius, 
aud by tlie iron which had entered the souL" 

" During his boyhood, and even for some years after he had 
reached manhood, his health was very delicate." He had an 
athletic frame, but a tendency to consumption threatened him in 
his childhood, and again when first he went to reside in London. 



444 FROM 17C0 TO 1790. 

De Quincey justly doscribes Burke as " the supreme writer of 
his century." No writer of that century is to be compared with 
liiin as regards command of English expression. \Vith equal 
justice, as it seems to us, he is desciibed by Carlyle as "a man 
vehement rather than earnest; a resplendent, far-sighted Rheto- 
rician, rather than a deep, sure Thinker." Others, who eagerly 
and somewhat I'crversely question this judgment of Carlyle' s, 
maintain him to have been " a man of tlie highest genius, taking 
rank with Shakspeare and Bacon." There is no necessary dis- 
crepancy between these views, if only we recognise diversity of 
gifts, and cease to advance impossible claims for our favourite 
authors. Burke v\'iy have had as much intellectual force as either 
Shakspeare or Bacon, although it displayed itself in a different line. 
'l"o be such a rhetorician as he w'as innjlies no common jjowers — 
Immense resources of expression and illustration, a wide and ready 
command of facts, and fertile and far-sighted ingenuity in arrang- 
ing facts and princii)les for the purposes of persuasion. To be 
among the foremost rhetoricians demands, probably, as great in- 
tellectual power of its kind as to be among the foremost i^oets or 
the foremost men of science. Be this as it may, one cannot read 
much of Burke's writings without seeing that they are essentially 
rhetorical. His 'Vindication of Natuial Society ' is obviously an 
exercise in the art of special pleading. Even his 'Essay on the 
Sublime and Beautiful ' is the work of a rhetorician rather than a 
clear-sighted analyst. It is not a ] profound analysis of {esthetic 
emotinns, but a witle assemblage of facts, and an ingenious plead- 
ing in favour of some very fanciful theories. His various i)amph!et3 
and si)eeches are, as j\lr Arnold says, "saturated with ideas" ; but 
the ideas are all brought out with polemical objects. Many of 
them appear to have occurred in the heat of pressing his point, 
and sometimes their application even carries an air of sophistry. 
The claim of high political sagacity, so often advanced in his 
favour, is not incompatible with this splendid ingenuity in ac- 
cumulating substantial and insubstantial arguments in support of 
his views. Yet one may well doubt whether Burke's political 
sagacity was of the first rank. Certain of his predictions are 
sometimes quoted as evidenee of this sagacity ; but not to men- 
tion that many of his ])redictions were oracular failures, the very 
fact of making confident i)olitical ])redietions is in itself an evi- 
dence of want of sagacity. It is, of course, un[)rofitable to argue 
regarding a term so vague ; yet we are safe to say that the highest 
hi'Uours of sagacity cannot be awarded to a man confessedly one- 
sided. He was too vehement and passiona'e to be abvays master 
of his sagacity. " When his i)assions were asleep," says an able 
editor of his works, " and his judgment calm, no man could dis- 
play more perspicacity ; the range and comprehensiveness of hia 



EDMUND BURKE. 445 

intellect peculiarly fitted him for grappling with the most difficult 
and complicated subjects. But Ms imagiiuition was capable of lead- 
ing him ado the u'ildest extravagances^ We can understand his 
vehemence against the French Eevolution : for a quarter of a 
century he had been the persistent champion of constitutional 
conservatism, and a persistent enemy to the realisation of pulitical 
ideals ; and in the close of his life he found his lessons violently 
infringed, and his favourite pupils applauding the infringement as 
the highest achievement of political wisdom. Nothing could have 
been more exasi)erating to a man of proud sensiljilities. But liis 
views of the French Eevolution are not the only evidence of his 
strong partiality for his own schemes. His opjiosition to Pitt's 
India Bill, and to Pitt's Bill for relieving the commerce of Irelaml, 
offers perhaps stronger evidence of blind attachment to ]trecon- 
ceived opinions. Doubtless he saw many aspects of a question, 
but he insisted upon thi'owing over them all a colour favourable 
to his own conclusions. The inability to look with the eyes of 
other men is universally admitted to have marred his influence in 
Parliament. Mr Macknight, who writes the life of Burke with 
somewhat of a biographer's partiality, allow^s that "his vehemence 
indeed was frequently injurious to the object he h;id in view. 
With his friends in a hopeless minority, iiis cherished measures 
entirely defeated, and his policy abhorred both by the Court and the 
nation, instead of growing apathetic, or at least quiescent, dnring 
this summer, he became only the more pertinacious, and even 
violent in his denuijciations of the Indian interest and the Govern- 
ment which it snjjported. His speeches at this time abound in 
imagery, philanthiopy, wisdom, all the noblest characteristics of 
his genius ; yet was the manner of their delivery so impetuous and 
fervent, that jilain men, who knew nothing and cared less about 
the crimes which he declared to have been perpetrated in India, 
thought his zeal, remaining, as it did, unseconded by the two 
leaders of the House, to be almost incompatible with soundness 
of mind." 

In many respects Burke presents a strong contrast to the social 
open-hearted Goldsmith. Both were compassionate and generous, 
and both were extremely sensitive to kindness and to affronts. 
But Burke had much more pride and reserve about him than 
Goldsmith; he was a much more dignified character. Goldsmith, 
with his keen sense of the ridiculous, and his power and habit of 
looking at himself from a spectator's point of view, often made a 
butt of his own failings. Burke bore himself with decorous self- 
respect. When Goldsmith wanted money, he borrowed openly 
and without shame; Buike died heavily in debt, yet somehow we 
never hear the circumstance mentioned. There was a correspond- 
ing difl'erence between the men in their social demeanour. Gold- 



446 FllOM 17G0 TO 1790. 

smith bestowed his affections, one might almost say, promiscuously; 
he was ready to fraternise with almost anybody : liurke, on the 
contrary, was a man of intense personal attachments, a devoted 
husband, a fond father, a firm adherent to the interests of his 
])atron. Volatile in his likings, Goldsmith was equally volatile m 
his dislikings. He was eminently a placable man, inca{)able of a 
sustaineil grudge. Burke hated with a vehemence corre.sponding 
to the warmth of his attachments, and thought no expression too 
coarse, no comparison too dei;rading, for the objects of his resent- 
ment. To complete the parallel. Goldsmith's wit is light, and his 
style very seldom endeavours to soar ; Burke deals rather in 
dignified irony or direct personal ridicule, and often soars to the 
highest heights of rhetorical sublimity. 

Burke possessed great industry, great powers of acquisition. 
" Pie used to boast that he had ' none of that master-vice, sloth,' 
in his disposition." "The most minute provisions of a compre- 
hensive act of legislation — the most wearisome drudgeries of 
Parliamentary committees — the driest and most tedious investi- 
gations necessary for dr.uving up elaborate reports, — to all this 
his patience and in lustry were tully equal. Some of the pul)lic 
documents he drew up are generally allowed to be perfect models 
of that species of composition." 

His ideal polity was government by a patriotic aristocracy. He 
was never weary of maintaining that the end of government is the 
good of the people, not the aggrandisement of the governing body. 
At the same time, he did not recognise what the majority of voices 
has since declared to be the best means of securing this. He 
resisted Parliamentary reform. Looking to tlie corruption and 
venality of the electors, he was disposed rather to lessen their 
number with a view to increasing their weight and independence. 
Against the selfishness of rulers, in case they were inclined to 
pursue their own interests and forget their duties to the country, 
he i)rovided no check but unembodied public opinion. 

From the beginning to the end of his political life he frequently 
declaimed against the immediate jtractlcal application of what he 
called "metaphysical theories" of government, lie was partic- 
ularly hostile to the obtrusion of " natural rights " as a basis for 
legislation. The statesman has to consider not what is right in 
the abstract, but \\liat is expedient in given circumstances. For 
his own part, the British constitution came near his ideal polity, 
and he vehemently contended that no change should be made 
except to remedy specific grievances. The disabilities of the 
Catholics, hardships in the Penal Code, financial extravagance, 
the ini(]uities of the Slave Ti-ade, were unmistakable definite 
evils, and should be redressed ; deficient representation in Parlia- 



EDMUND BUKKE. 447 

ment was but an imaginary evil — a hardship in speculation, not 
in practice. 

With all Ills contempt for "visionary politicians," "metaphy- 
sical theorists," " lej^islaturs of the schools," " sophisters," and 
suchlike, he must not be classed with such "practical men" as 
Macaulay, who profess to dispense with theory altogether. "I 
do not," he says, " put abstract ideas out of the question, because 
I well know that under that name I should dismiss principles, 
and that without the guide and light of sound, well-understood 
principles, al reasonings in politics, as in everything else, would 
lie only a confuted jumble of jKirticular facts and details, without 
the means of drawing out any theoretical or practical conclusion." 
Again — 

" I do not vilify tlicory and spfcnlation — !io, because that would be to 
yilify reason itself. No ; wliene\(M' 1 spiak aj^'auist theory, I always mean 
a Weak, erroneous, fallacious, unrounded, or imperfect theory ; and one of 
the ivays of discoverinj^ tliat it is a Calse theory is to compare it with p actice. 
This is the true touchstone of all tlieories which regard man and the atiairs 
of men." 

True, his language is not always so guarded ; and unless we 
happen to light upon the right jiassages, we shall suppose him to 
have embraced, in his conteuqit for me'a|)hysical pulitics, all works 
on the theory of government, from Loike downwards. If we read 
attentively, we find that in his calm moments he was far from 
despising ]»oIitical theories; his real aversion was for attemi>ts to 
give immediate effect to political ideals in all their completeness : — 

" I do not meati to condemn such speculative enquiries concerning this 
great object of tlie national attention" (the Constitution). "They may 
tend to clear doubtful points, ami jmssibly vtay lead, as llicy have often 
done, to real improvements. What I object to, is their introduction into a 
discourse relating to the immediate state of our aiiairs, and recommending 
plans of practical government." 

One great feature in his statesmanship was his consistent en- 
deavour to introduce into the conduct of affairs between nation 
and nation higher principles of morality. Nations should be 
humane, just, and generous in their dealings with nations, as 
men should be humane, just, and generous in their dealings with 
men; what is immoral for a man is equally imiuoral for a nation. 
He ignored the fact that there is no earthly tribunal to preside 
over international disputes; no executive to punish international 
delinquencies ; no higher jiower to guarantee nations in the posses- 
sion of life and property should their neighbours be less generoua 
and just than themselves. 



448 FROM 17G0 TO 1790. 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocahnlary. — Enrke's command of expression is strikingly rich. 
He rejoices in multiform repetitions, in varied presentations of tlie 
subject-matter : — 

" It may be safely said tliat there never was a man under wlio^e 
hands language was more i)lastic and ductile. No matter what liis 
subject — no matter what the modifica ion of thiught which de- 
mands expression — he has always at command language at once 
the most appropriate and the most beautiful. As to the materials 
of his style, his vocal)ulary was as extensive as his knowledge, — 
and that was boundless. It consisted of the accumulated spoils of 
many languages and of all ages. Not only so, the technicalities 
and appro[)riated phraseology of almost all sciences and arts, pro- 
fessions and modes of life, were familiar to him, an I were ready to 
express in the most emphatic manner the exhaustless metaphors 
which his imaginatitm supplied from these sources. What is not 
a little remarkable, he could employ with equal ]>ower all the ele- 
ments of our copious language, combining the eloquence and rich- 
ness of a classical diction with all the nerve and energy of our 
Saxon vernacular. For lofty or dignified sentiment, he has at 
command all the magnificence of the former; while to give point 
and energy to sarcasm, and ridicule, and invective, he can employ 
the full powers of the latter." 

We have already sai I that we regard such unqualified panegyrics 
as hopeless but profitable ideals, rather than descriptions of any- 
thing that has been or can be actually achieved. Perfect command 
of English, like any other ])crfection, is hard to attain ; we must 
be content to rank Burke among the few that have come nearest 
to that perfection. 

The following are two exami)les of his habit of urging the same 
fact in many different forms. The first is from his reply to the 
political pamphlet supposed to have been written by Grenville: — 

"The piece is calleil 'The Present State of the Nation.' It may be con- 
giileifd as a sort of dii^est of the avowed maxims of a certain political scliuol, 
tliC clfects of whose doctrines and practices this country will feel lonj^ and 
Severely. It is made np of a farraiijo of almost every t()i)ic which has been 
auilated on natiomJ affairs in Parliamentary deliate, or private conversation, 
for tliese last seven years. Tlie oldest controversies are hauled out of the 
dust with which time and neglect had covereil them. Arguments ten times 
lepeated, a thousand times answered before, are here repeated again. Public 
aciounts formerly printed and reprinted revcdve once more, and find their 
old station in tliis sober meridian. All the commonplace lamentations n])on 
tiie decay of trade, the increase of taxes, and the hi_i;h piice of lalionr and 
j>rovisions, are here retailed again and again in tlie same tone witii wiiich 
they have drawled tlirough coliniuis of (iazetteers and Advertisers for A 
Century togeliier. Paradoxes which alfrout commou-scuse, and uuintcrcst- 



EDMUND BUKKE. 449 

ing barTPn truths wliinh generate no ooinlnsion, are tliniwn in to augment 
umvielily bulk without aiidiiig aiiytliiiig to weight,. Because two iiccu.s;i lions 
are better than one, contradictions are set staring one anotlier in tlie lace 
without even an attempt to reconcile tbem. Ami, to give the win le a sort 
of portentous air ot labour and intnrniatioii, the talile ot ihe House of Coin- 
mous is swept into this grand reservoir of politics." 

Our other example is taken from the famous ' Letter to a Noble 
Lord ' : — 

"Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tiilnmals, where 
men have been put to death for no other leason tlian that lliey liad obtained 
favours from the Crown. I claim not the letter, but the spiiit, of the old 
English law— tliat is, to he tried by my peers. I decline his Grac»-'s juris- 
diction as a judge. I challenge the Duke ol Bedford as a juror to piss upon 
the value of my services. Whatever liis natural paits may be, I caiiuot 
re( ogiii.se in his few and idle years, the competence to judge of my long and 
laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be upon the iiuiucst of my 
quantum meruit. Poor rich man ! He can hardly km.w anything of public 
industry in its exertions, or can estimate its compeiisaiions when its work 
is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's readiness in all the calculations of 
vulgar arithmetic ; but 1 shrewdly suspect that he is little studied in the 
theory of moral ])roportioiis ; and has never learned the rule of tliree in the 
arithmetic of policy and state." 

Sentences. — Giving his strength to the choice of words and of 
illustrations, he seems to have paid little atiention to the mech- 
anism of his sentences. Clumsily constructed sentences occur 
frequently in his essay on the ' Sublime and Beautiful,' and 
occasionally in his later jiroductioiis. He cannot be said to 
■write in a formed style. In many of his vehement passages the 
sentences move with an abruptness and ra{iidity resembling the 
habitual mannerism of jMacaulay. Kearly all the 'Leter to a 
Noble Lord ' is written in this style. The following extract is 
a good specimen : — 

'In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me 
and my mortuary pension. He cannot readily conipreheiid tiie transaction 
he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no barg.-iin ; the 
production of no intrigue ; the result of no conqiroiiiise ; the etiect of no 
solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately or 
immediately, to His Majesty or any of his ministi-rs. It was long known 
that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest 
of all calamities had for ever condemned me to obscurity and soirow, 1 had 
re.solved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I was entirely out 
of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or any i)arty when the 
ministers so generously and so nobly carried into elfect the siionianeous 
bounty of the Crown. Both descriptions have acted as became them. 
"When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my 
situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the l.'evolutionists have 
trampled on my infirmity, My gratitude, I trust, is ecjual to the nianner 
in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me, indeed, at a time of 
life, and in a state of mind and bodv, in ■which no circumstance of fortune 
could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fa\dt in ihe royal donor, 
or in hia ministeis, who were pleased, in aiknowkdgiug the Uicriti' of an 

2 F 



450 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

invalid servant of tho public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old 
uiaii." 

Figures of Speech. — Bui ke's profusion of figurative language haa 
been the theme of endless admiration. His mind was a repertory 
of things generally known concerning history, sciences, profes- 
sions, nuinut'actures, handicrafts ; and he drew illustrations from 
all classes of subjects in his multifarious knowledge. It is too 
much to say that "abstract :ind physical science, the most familiar 
and domestic arts, the j)rofessions, nay, the handicrafts practised 
by all classes of men, must yield up their pectdiar vii/steries, their 
most recoHi/ite and technical phrasealog//, to furnish the materials 
of his illustrations." Such things need "illustration" rather than 
aiTord it. To make obscurities plain, we do not have recourse to 
tlie most recondite :ind technical phraseology of special occnjia- 
tions. Burke does, indeed, occasionally use very technical terms 
— such as "lixiviated" and "aphelion" ; but it is misleading to 
speak of this in the language of admiration. 

It is usually said that his later writings are much more figurar- 
tive than his earlier. In the hands of Macaulay this }iaradoxical 
circumstance has been gieatly exaggera ed. 'i he figurative lan- 
guage of his earlier productions is more subdued, and attracts 
comparatively little attention; but the figuraiive turn is uiimis- 
takaiily there. And the langu.ige of his youthful letters is quite 
as extravagant :is the most extravagant of his fu.minatiuns against 
the Frenili llevoliition. 

Like Cailyle, he makes abundant use both of tropes and of the 
explicit figures. He is es[iecially rich in metaphors : he has been 
called "the greatest mister of metaphor that the wnrld has ever 
seen;" and if we except Carlyle, we may allow that he is the 
mo^t metaphorical of our [irose writers. 

We sha 1 not attempt to give a classified illustration of his 
figures. They are taken, iis we have 8aid, from many sources. 
A few extracts from his 'Letter to a Noble Lord' will give the 
reader a fair idea of their character. We must, however, remem- 
ber that this composition was written at fever-heat, with the 
flaming vehemence of insulted sensiliility, and that the illustia- 
tions have a corresponding tempeiature. Otherwise the specimen 
is sufficiently representative : — 

"Let nie tell my youthful censor that the necessities of that time required 
8ome;liiiig very diifLMeiit from what others then siigt,'esteil, or \vh;it his (Jnice 
now conceives. Let nie iiilonu him that it was one of the most critical 
penoils in our annals. 

" Astronomers have sup{)oscd, that if a certain comet, whose path inter- 
cepted the ecliptic, had mot the earth in some (1 forget wliat) sign, it would 
have whirled us ahmg wiih it, in its eccentric course, into God knows what 
regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man 
(which 'from its horrid hair shakis pestilence and war,' and ' with fear of 



EDMUND BUKKE. 451 

change perplexes monarchs '), had that comet crossed upon ns in that inter- 
nal state of England, nothing hun^an could have prevented our being irre- 
sistibly hurried out of the highwiiy of iieaven into all the vices, crimes, 
horrors, and miseries of the Fiencli Ecvolution. 

" Happily, France was not then jaeobini^ed. Her hostility wwb at a good 
distance. We had a limb cut otf ; but we preserved the body. We lost our 
colonies; but we kept nur constitution. There was indeed much intestine 
heat; there was a dreidful fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection 
quitted the woods, and prowled about our streets in the name of reform. 

" Had [certain ' Parliamentary reforms '] taken place, not France, but 
England, would have had the honour of leading up the death -dance of 
democratic revolution. 

" My measures were, what I then truly stated them to the House to be, in 
their intent, healing and mediatorial. 1 heaved the lead every inch of way 
I made. 

"The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to 
reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all uiichmufed. 
The consequences are before us— not in remote history, not in future prog- 
nostiration : they are alxuit us ; they are upon us. The revolution harpies 
of France, s]irung from night and hell, or tr^ ni that chaotic anarchy which 
generates equivocally 'all monstrous, all ]irodiL;ious things,' curkoo-like, 
adulterously lay their eggs, and br«'od over and hatch tliem in the nest of 
every neiglibouriiig State. These obscene harpies, who deck themselves in 
I know not what divine attributes, but who in reality are toul and ravenous 
birds of J)rey (both mothers and daughters), tliitter over our heads, and 
Bouse down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unriiled, unravaged, 
or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy olIaL 

" I was not, like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled 
into a legislator ; Nitor in adrersuni is the motto for a man like me. At 
every step of my progress in life (tor every step was 1 traversed and op- 
posed), and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport, 
and again and again to prove my title to the honour of being useful to my 
country. 

" The grants to the house of Rtissel were so enormous as not only to out- 
rnge economy, but even to stagg'-r credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the 
leviathan among all the creatures ot the Crown. He tumbles about his 
nnvvielly bulk ; he plays and he Irolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. 
Hiigi as he is, and whilst ' he lies lloating many a rooil,' he is still a crea- 
ture. His ribs, his lins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles 
through which he spouts a torrent ot brine against his origin, and covers me 
all over with the sjnay — everything of hiin and almiit him is from the 
throne. Is it lor him to question the dispensation of the royal favour? 

"The persons who have suifeied from the cannibal jdiilosophy of France 
are so like the Duke of B' dfoid, that nothing but his (trace's probably not 
B])eaking quite so good French, could enable us to find out any difl'erence. 
. . . I assure him that the FieiichiMud facHon, more encouraged than 
others, are warned by what has happ'-ned in France. Look at him and his 
landed possessions as an (dject at once of curiosity and rapacity. He is 
made fur them in every part of their double character. As robbers, to them 



452 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

he is a Jiolilo hooty ; ns sperulntists, lie is a {rlorioiis snlijcct for tlioir expcri- 
iiipiital jiliilosopliy. He .-ilFonls )iiatt(!r for ;in fxtctisivt; analysis in all the 

braiichi's of ilieir si'ieiue. j^i'OMietiical, pliysiciil, civil, and iiiilitical 

D' ej) iiliilos(>|)lK'rs ai'c no tiillei-s : brave sans-euloitcs are no formalists. 
Tlii-y will no more regard a Maiiiuis of Tavistuck than an Aoliot of Tavi- 
stock ; the Lord of Wobnrn will not he more respectalde in their eves than 
the l*rior of Wobiiin ; they will make no diffi'n'm'e between the Mi|ierior of 
a Covent Garden of ninis, and of a Covtiit Garden of anotlur description. 
They will not care a rush whether his coat is lonj; or short ; wheiln-r the 
colour lie purple or blue and buff. They will not trouble tJieir heads with 
what pan of Ids heail his hair is cut from ; and they will look with eipial 
respect on a tonsure and a crop. Thiir only question will he, that of tlieir 
Legendre, or some other of their lefjislative butchers, how he cuts \x\^'\ how 
Le tallows in the caul or on the kidneys? 

" Is it not a singular phenomenon, that whilst the snns-cnlotte carcase- 
butcliei-s, and ihe philosophers of the shambles, are ]>ri(d<iMj^ their dotti-d 
lines upon his hide, and liki' the jiriiit of the jioor ox that we see at the 
siuip-wiiidows at (Jharing-( loss, alive ms he is, and thinking no li:irm in the 
world, he is divided into rumps, and sirloins, and bri>k('ts, and into all sorts 
of pieces for roasting, boiling', and stewing, that all the while they are 
measuring him, his Grace is measuring mc ; is iiiviilionsly comparing the 
bounty of tiie Crown with the deserts of the dideiider of his order, and in 
the same moment f iwiiing on those who have the knife half out of the 
sheatli — i)uor innocent ! 

'P eas'il tn t)if Ia>it, lip crops the fl'iw'ry fond, 
And licks llie liaml just raised to shed liis blood.'" 

QUALITIES OF STYLK. 

Simplicity. — From the nature of his subjects, and the imperious 
necessity of being directly intelligible to an audience, the iniblic 
speaker generally uses a more familiar dictinn than tlie writer of 
recondite books ; and when he takes his pen in hand to produce a 
political ]i:imphlet, his style is likely to have something of tlie easy 
intelligibility of his speeches. Burke cannot be classed among the 
more abstruse writers of our language. But he may be said to be 
fibstruse for an orator. His turn of expression is often abstract; 
and in the pursuit of loftiness an I diijiiity, he introduces a large 
mixture of unfamiliar words from Latin sources. 

Not, however, that he is invariably magniloquent. He fre- 
quently unbends, and then becomes homely enough. Especially 
when he wishes to cover anything with ridicule, his words are 
taken from everyday si)eech, and his figures from the commonest 
objects; indeed, both words and figures are often plain to the 
degree of being coarse. 

He is the model of Macanlay in his abundant use of facts and 
statistics. But his facts and statistics have not the sim|ile effect 
of JNIacaulay's ; he is more tlioroughgoing, enters more into detail ; 
his 'Observations on the State of the Naiion,' and his si)eech on 
' I'conomical Reform,' are not superlicial productions, but discuss 
their respective topics \\ith the fulness of a speech on the Budget. 



EDMUND BURKE. 453 

Clearness, Perspicuitij. — His earlier writings are arranged with 
great clearness. His later works, like Carlyle's political rhai> 
sodies, are less perspicuous. He was aware of the importance of 
method ; in his ' Reflections on the French Revolution,' he adopted 
the form of a letter advisedly, that he miyht have greater scope. 
"A different plan, he was sensible, might liave been more favour- 
able to a commodious division and distribution of the matter." 
In such a work, rigid obedience to a plan would have been a cold 
obstruction to the warm flow of his eloquence. 

Precision. — It may be doubted whether, with all his industry, he 
had patience enough to be a precise writer. His treati.se on the 
* Subliu)e and Beautiful ' is very much wanting in the exactness 
required for scientific discussion. He shows himself conscious of 
the principle that in scientific writing each word should be used in 
a definite sense ; and himself proposes to give the loose word " de- 
light " a distinctive signification ; but before many pages are over 
he violates his own detiniti<in. 

Strength. — Strength is the prominent quality in Burke's style, 
as it is in our literature generally. The peculiar mcide is difficult 
to express; but it may be said that Burke's strength has si>me- 
thing of the quabty of ]\Iacaulay's, although possessing greater 
body and less rapidity and point. We have already mentioned 
the similarity in the structure of their sentences. They have also 
a similar declamatory energy, a similar cuncreteness, and some- 
thing of the same mixture of original turns of expression with a 
copious use of stock-[)hr;ises. Before we can feel the resemblance, 
we must leave out of sight the differences in opinion and in depth 
and range of thought ; when we succeed in disregarding these 
differences in subject-matter, the resemblance otherwise is very 
striking. 

The following is a fair specimen of the general style of the 
'Reflections.' In it we can easily trace all the above points of 
resemblance to Macaulay : — 

"I finil a preacher of tlie Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic 
ejaiulaiioii coninioiily called 7Uinc dimiltis, made on the fust presentation of 
our Saviour in the Temple, and a)i])lyinjf it with an inhuman and unnatufiil 
rapture, to tlie most hoi i id, atrocious, and afflicting sjiectacle that perhaps 
ever was exhibited to the piiy and indignation of niaulvind. Tljis 'leading 
in triumph,' a tiling in its best tovni unmanly and ineligious, wliich tills 
our preacher willi such unhallowed transports, must slioek, I believe, the 
moral taste of every well-born mind. Several Englibh were the stuijetied 
and indignant spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have been 
strangely ileceivcd) a s)iectaclK more resembling a ]irocessii>n of American 
savages, entering into Onondago, atter sfune of their nuirders called victories, 
and leading into hovels hung round with scalps, their captives, over]iowered 
with the scotl's and butl'ets of women as ferocious as themselves, much more 
than it resembled the triumphal ])omp of a civilised, martial nation ; — if a 
ci\ ilisc'd nation, or any men who hail a sense of generosity, were capable o/ 



454 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

a personal triumph over tlie fallfin and the affl'cted. ... I must helieve 
that tlie National Assembly find themselves in a state of the f^reat'st humili- 
ation m not l)eing ahle to punish the authors of this triumph or the actora 
in it ; and that they are in a situation in wliitdi any inquiry they may make 
upon the su'Jeet must be destitute even of tiie appearance of liberty or im- 
]iarti;dity. Tlie apology of that Assembly is found in their situation ; but 
when we a])prove what they tnust bear, it is in us the degenerate choice of a 
vitiated mind. 

" With a compellod appearance of deliberation they vote under the 
dominion of a .stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it were, of a 
foreign republic ; tliey have their residence in a city wliose constitution hns 
emanated n^itiier from tlie charter of their king, nor from their legislative 
power. There they are surrounded by an army not raised either by the 
authority of their crown, or by tlieir command ; and whiidi, if they should 
order to dissolve itself, would instantly dis.solve tliem. There they sit, after 
a giing of assassins had driven away some hundreds of the members ; whilst 
those who held the same moderate prinri|iles, with more ]>atience or better 
liope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults and murderous 
threats. There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes }>ietended, captive 
itsidf, compels a captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the 
])olluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coHee-houses. It is 
notorious that all their measures are deciiled belbre they are debated. It is 
beyond doubt tliat under the terror of tlie bayonet, and the lamp-post, and 
the torch to their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude and des- 
])erate measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all 
condition.s, tongues, and nations. Among tiiese are found jierson-s, in com- 
jiarison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man 
of sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in the clubs alone that the public 
measures are deformed into monsters. They uudeigo a previous distortion 
in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set 
u|) in all the ])lacis of public resort. In these meetings of all sorts, every 
counsel, in pro|i()itioii as it is daring, and violent, and perfidious, is taken 
for a niiirk of su[)eiior geniu-i. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as 
the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is 
considered as trtason to the jdiblic. Ijiberty is always to he estimated per- 
fect as property is ren<lered insecure. Amidst assaNsination, massacre, and 
confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the good 
onler of future soiiety. Embracing in their arms the carcases of base 
criminals, and promoting their relations on the title of their ofi'ences, they 
drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same eud, by forcing tliein to sub- 
sist by beggary or by crime." 

In passages specially laboured, where Burke's individual genius 
is at its lieiglit, and the figtires and turns of exjiression are peculi- 
arly his own, we cannot profess to trace any appreciable likeness. 
Tlie following is quoted by De Quincey, with the remark that 
Burke is .said to have acknowledged spending more labour upon 
it than upon any passage in all his writings, and to have been 
tolerably satisfied with the result: — 

"As long as the well-compacted structure of our Church and State, the 
Banctiiary, the holy of holies of that amaent law, det'ended by reverence, 
defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, snail stand inviolate on 
the brow of the Biiiish Zioii ; as long as the Biitish monarchy, not ima-e 
limited than fenced by the orders ol the State, shall, like the proud keep of 



EDMUND BURKE. 455 

Wiiulsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt 
of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall over- 
see and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds and dykes of the low 
flat Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all tlie pickaxes of all the 
levellers of France. As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful 
subjects the lords and couimons of this realm, the triple cord which no man 
can break ; the solemn sworn constitutional frank •])lcdge of this nation ; the 
firm guarantees of each other's being and each other's rights ; the joint and 
several secuiities, each in its place and order for every kind and every 
quality of ]uo]iert}' and of dignity, — as long as these endure, so long the 
Duke of Bedford is safe, and we aie all safe together ; the high from the 
blights of envy and the spoliation of rapacity ; the low from the iron hand 
of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen ! and so be it : 
and 80 it will be, 

' Dum doitius Mnex Capitoli iinmnhile saxum 
Accolet ; iniiieiiunique pater Roniaiius liabebit.' " 

The great elemetit of power in Burke, over and above what he 
has in common with Macanlay, is his extravagant splemlour of 
imagery. This, especially in the picked passages usually quoted 
from him, gives such a flavour to his composition, that readers, 
forming their judgment upon these passages, would refuse to 
believe how much Macaulay had made him a model. He rises 
to a pitch of wild excitement that Macaulay was incapaMe of. 
The images thrown off in these iiiigoveniable moments were such 
as Macaulay could never have imitated. The following, from the 
' Letters on a Regicide Peace,' describing the eniba.ssy to the 
French Minister, is a well-known quotation : — 

" To those who do not love to contemplate the fall of human greatness, 
I do not know a more niortilying spectacle than to see the assembled 
majesty of the crowned heads of Europe waiting us patient suitors in the 
ante-ciiamber of regicide. Tliey wait, it seems, until the sanguinary tyiant 
Cariiot shall have snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood ot liis 
sovereign. Tlien, when, sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall have 
sufficiently indulged his meditations with what monarch he shall next glut 
his ravening maw, he may condescend to signify tliat it is his jdeasure to be 
awake ; and that he is at leisure to receive the proposals of his high and 
mighty clients for the terms on which he may respite the execution of the 
sentence he has passed upon them. At the opening of those doors, what a 
sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries of royal imiiotence, in the 
precedency which they will intrigue to olitain, and which will lie granted to 
them accoi'ding to the seniority of their degradation, sneaking into the 
regicide presence, and, with the relics of the smile, which they iiad dres.sed 
up for the levee of their masters, still flickering on their curled li]is, present- 
ing the faded remains of their courtly graces, to meet the scornful, ferocious, 
sardimic grin of a bloody ruffian, who, whilst he is receiving their homage, 
is measuring them with his eye, and fitting to their size the slider of his 
guillotine ! These ambassachns may easily return as good coiiriiers as tliey 
went : but can they ever return from that degrading icsidfJice, loyal and 
faithful subjects; or with anv true affection to their nia.s;<-r, or true attach- 
ment to the constitution, religion, or laws of their country ? There is great 
danger that they, who enter smiling into this Troplumian cave, will come 
out of it sad and serious conspirators ; and such will continue as long 



456 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

as tliey live. They will beiome true contluctors of contagion to every 
country wliich has had the niislortuue to send them to the source of that 
electiicity." 

Pathos. — Burke is often said to excel in pathos as in every other 
quality of style; but if we take tranquillity and coiiipnsure to be 
part of the essence of pathos, there is very little of it to be found 
within the range of liis published works. It was inconsistent with 
his purposes as an orator to draw soothing pictures of distress. In 
the conclusion of the celebrated Reguin charge in the trial of 
Warren Hastings, he is said to have made " an affecting ajipeal 
to the feelings and the passions of their lordships ; " but his 
object was to horrify and inllame them, not to iill them with 
luxurious feelings of compassion. The soft tranquillity of patlios 
was inconsistent with his purposes as an orator. It was no less 
inconsistent with his natnre. An excitable man, of ungovern- 
able sensiliility, when his feelings were moved he was ever prone 
to run into wild extravagance. He probal)ly possessed the power 
of communicating his own excitement to such as were not repelled 
by it; but the effect produced went very far beyonil the tranquil 
borders of pathos. 

His well known allusion to Marie Antoinette is very touchin;;, 
but it touches our seiisil)ilities more keenly than pathos. The 
emotion cannot sustain itself in the melting mood, but passes into 
fiery indignation. 

The Ludicrous. — During his quarter of a century of polemical 
life, he made abundant use of the weapon of ridicule. In his 
earlier writings lie had recourse chiefly to dignified irony — irony 
that shows no great wit, but is always pleasing and effective from 
the copiousness and vigour of the language. The ridicule of his 
later writings, of which we have ha 1 a specimen in the quotations 
from his 'Letter to a Noble Lord,' is extravagantly excited and 
personal. " If by wit," says Mr Rogers, " be meant any of its 
lighter and more playful species, then it can hardly be doubted 
that in these Rnrke did nt)t excel ; at least whatever powers of 
this kind he might possess, they were in no sort of pioportion to 
his other intellectual endowments. It is true that liuike was fond 
of punning; his success, however, was not equal to his ardour in 
the pursuit. Again, if by wit be meant that caustic and subtle 
irony, which is the more powerful from the calmness of the style, 
and stings the deeper from the collected manner of him who utters 
it — neither did Burke possess much of this. But if by wit be 
meant any of its forms compatible with fierce invective, his 
8i)eeches abound with iimumerable instances of the highest merit." 
His invective, as we see in his attack upon the Duke of Bedford, 
is of the most direct and unvarnished kind. He does not scruple 
to make the most grossly offensive comparisons in the plainest 



EDMUND BURKE. 457 

terms. Frequently, indeed, by liis vehemence, he defeated his 
own ends. . Unly partisans could have applauded his recrimina- 
tions on the Duke of Bedfoid, and his unmeasured abuse of 
Hastings provoked a reaction in favour of the victim. 

The following are examples of the licence that he ventured to 
take in his invective against Hastings. We quote from the collec- 
tion of his speeches : — 

" What (said Mr Burke) could make this proud and haughty ruler of In'lia 
submit to such language, and bear with such oiijirobrium ? Gui't, conscinus 
puilt ! The cursed love of money had got possession of his soul ; and in the 
contemplation ot iiis detoted wealtli, he f'Und sufiicient consolation for tlie 
loss of cliaracter and of iionour. Under the lash of Sir John Clavering, aud 
tlie execration of all Asia, he seemed to say with the poet — 

* Pnmihis me sibilat, at mihi pluvdo 

Ipse domi, siiiiiil ac nummos cuntemplur in area.' 1 

It was this love of money that male liim deaf to the calls of glory, and 
callous to the feelings of honour. It was this unbounded and insatiable 
p;ission for money tliat had seared his conscience and his feelings ; and 
ha| py in the accuimdation of wealth, even liy the foul^-st means, he could 
bear, unninved, the most cutting reproaches of Sir John Clavering. He hiy 
down in his sty of infnny, wallowed in the tilth of disgrace, aud fattened 
upon the offals and excrements of dishonour. " 

Again — 

" Mr Burke then cited passages from a variety of oriental authors, prov- 
ing tiie right of property in India, ami showing that that property had been 
n-specteil by tlie greatest jirinces and con<iui-rors, by Tamerlane, Gengis 
Khan, KliouH Klian, and others. But (said Mr Burke) the Council have 
fancied that we c<impaied Mr Hastings to Tamerlane and others, and they 
have told 3'our lordships of the thousands of men slauglitcied by the anibi- 
tii:n of tliose princes. Good God ! have they lost their senses'^ Can they 
su[)|iose that we meant to compare a fiandident maker of bullock-contracts 
with an illustrious conqneior ? We never compared Hastings to a lion or a 
tiger ; we have compaieu him to a rat or a weasel. Wlien we assimilate him 
to suih contemptible animals, we do not mean to convey an iiha of tlieir 
incapability of diiing injury. When God ]iunishcd Pharaoh and Eg> [it, it 
was not by armies, but by locusts and by lice, which, thougli small and 
contem[itible, are capable of the greatest mischiefs." 

S'ich puerile meanness of invective must inevitably recoil upon 
the author. In a cooler frame of mitid, Btirke himself would 
have been the first to condemn it; and we cannot snpfiose that 
he ever indulged in it without to some extent bullying his artistic 
as well as his prudential conscience. 

His fury against Hastings carried him to lengths still more 
outr;igeuu3 : — 

" He made some very sarcastic similes as to the connection between Mr 
Hastings and the Begums, quoting Dean Swift's ' Progress of Love ' as 

1 " The people hiss me, but when I go home and feast my eyes upon the coins 
in my safe, I cry ' Bravo ! ' to myself." 



458 FROM 1T60 TO 1790. 

•ppli'caWe on the orcnsion. Tlie Inimoiir toucliinc; tlie Munny Becfura 
flowed something in tliis way: ' Agi; lias its coni forts — tlm consolations of 
del)ility and n!,'lines3 m.iy be found in bramly. Tlie old lady liad tln'iein a 
nionojKily. Sli« was a great dealer in the article. But mark the transition 
— a yonth of scntiiiifiit and love ; an old age reposing upon the hiandy-<'ask.' 
lie then ironieallv adverted to the pas-ion of great nien for strumpets. 
'Antony had his Ch-opafra, and Mr Has ings his Munny l>egnm. It might 
be so; fur aged, shiivelled, bony deformitv had its relish for some palates; 
but, good (!od ! no man ever fell in love with his own banyan i ! '" 

We have seen that he compared Hastings to a wallowing sow. 
He also comiiared him to "the keeper of a pigsty, wallowing 
in filth and corrui)tion." Towards the conclusion he became so 
violent as to apply the ejiithets "rogue, common cheat, swindler"; 
and to declare — "You must repeal this Act of Parliament, you 
must declare the Legislature a liar, before you can acquit Warrea 
Hastings." 

Taste. — In his more excited compositions Burke frequently 
offends against gooil taste. His abuse of the Duke of Bedford, 
of Warren Bastings, and of the piiticipal actors in the French 
Revolution, is often outrageously course. His comparison of the 
Duke to a whale, his comparison of Hastings to a sow, and his 
imauining Carnot to have drunk the l)lo 'd of a king, and to be 
"snorting away the fumes of indigestion" in consequence, cannot 
be paralleled except from " the scolding of tlie ancients " ; and 
these are not periiaps his worst violations of taste. Lord Brougham 
produces the following tit-bit concerning Mr Dundas : — 

"With six great chopping bastards" ('Reports of Secret Committee'), 
"each as lusty as an intant Hercules, this,delieate creature blushes at the 
sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy ; or to use a more 
lit, as well as a more poetical, comparison, tlie person so s(]ueamisli, so 
timid, so trembling lest the winds of h' aveii should visit too rouuhly, is 
ex))anded to broaci sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying 
in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as evidence of 
her delicate amour." 

These occasional infractions of taste, gross though they be, must 
not be allowed to detract from his just fame as " ihe supreme 
writer of his cinrury." Taste is certainly not the special virtue 
of English literature: there is none of our greatest masters of 
prose that docs not offend in some particular. Burke was far 
from being luone "to revolve ideas from which other minds 
shrink with disgust," at least in cold blood ; only when excited 
he could not find images too disgusting to express his aversion. 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Dfxn-iption. — Burke's descriptive forte is very like Macaulay's. 
There is no method iu his di;scriptions ; his works contain none of 

I " Money-broker." 



EDMUND BURKE. 459 

the elaborate word-painting to be found in Carlyle ; but he details 
ini})ressive circumstances with his characteristic fulness of expres- 
sion, and profusion and boldness of imagery. 

He gives the following picturesque account of the ancient 
manner of catering for the royal household : — 

"These old estahlishmeiits were formed also on a third principle, still 
more adverse to the living economy of the aj^e. They were formed, sir, on 
the principle of purveyance, and receipt in kind. In former diiys, when the 
lionsehold was vast, and the snpply scanty and jirecarinus, the royal j ur- 
veyors, snllj'ing forth from under the Gothic portcullis to purchase provision 
with [lower and prerogative instead of money, brougiit home the plunder of 
a hundred markets, and all that could be seized from a flying and hiding 
country ; and deposited their spoils in a hundred caverns, with each its 
keeper. " 

The present condition of the royal palaces he describes as 
follows : — 

" But when the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to pre- 
serve nothing but the burtiien of theni. . . . Our jialares are vast, 
inhospitable lialls. Tliere the bleak winds, there 'Boreas, and Eurus, and 
Cauius, and Aigestes loud,' howlini,' tlirouj^h the vacant hjbbies, and clat- 
tering the doors of deserted guard-ioonis, appal tlie imagination, and conjure 
up tile grim spectres of departed tyrants — the Saxon, the Norman, and the 
Dane ; the stern Edwards and fierce Henries — who stalk from desolation to 
desolation, through the dreary vacuity, and melancholy succession of (diill 
and comfortless chambers. . . . They put me in mind of Uld Sartim, 
where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve 
to inform us tliat this was once a place of trade, and sounding with ' the 
busy hum of men,' thongli now you can only trace the streets l)y the colour 
of the corn ; and its sole manufacture is in members of Parliament." 

Persuasion. — Our author's qualifications as an orator are elabo- 
r.itely analysed by Mr Rogers, from whom we make the following 
extracts : — 

" As an orator, Burke will never bo ranked among the very first 
masters of the art, so long as the professed object of oratory shall 
be conviction and persuasion. Not that we for a moment assert 
that the degree of eloquence possessed by an orator is always to 
be estimated by his success. By no means ; for as on the one 
hand there are many cases in which the divinest eloquence will in 
vain contend against the prejudices of an audience predetermined 
not to be convinced, so there are many where the passions have 
already spoken more eloquently than the orator. The question, in 
such instances, is not how much, but how little, oratorical skill is 
necessary to success." — Treating eloquence and oratorical skill as 
synonymous — a somewhat questionable usage — ^Ir Rogers goes on 
to remark that Burke's eloquence was not "adapted to produce 
success." 

For purposes of persuasion he erred in not apj^ealing to prin- 
ciples of action. He allowed his reason and his imagination to 



4C0 FnOM 17G0 TO 1790. 

play freely upon the subject, and did not confine himself to the 
orator's chief end — namely, to i;uide his audience to a particu'ar 
resolution. "He can seldom confine himself to a simple business- 
like view of the subject under discussion, or to close, raj)id, com- 
pressed argumentation on it. On the contrary, he makes bound- 
less excursions into all the regions of moral and political jiliilosophy; 
is peri)eiually tracing up {)arti(;u!ar instances and subordinate prin- 
ciples to i)rofound and com[)rL'hcnsive maxims; amplifying and 
expanding the most meagre materials into brief but comprehensive 
dissertations of iiolitical science, and incrusting (so to S])eak) the 
nucleus of the most insignificant fact with the most exijuisite 
crystallisations of truth; while the whole composition glitters 
and sparkles again with a rich profusinn of moral reflections, 
equally beautiful and just." "His exuberance of fancy" was 
"equally unfavourable to the attainment of the highest oratorical 
excellence. When a speaker indulges in very lengthened or elab- 
orate imagery, a suspicion is sure to be engendered (and, except 
in one or two instances of very extraordinary mental structure, 
that suspicion is uniformly just) that he is scarcely in earnest; 
that if he has an object, it is to commend his own eloquence 
rather than to convince his audience; that his inspiration is not 
the inspiration of nature ; and for this very sufficient i eason, that 
it is not natural for intense emotion to express itself in the fan- 
tastic forms of laboured imagery. . . . When illustration is 
very abundant and elaborate, even the admiration it may excite 
will often be anything but friendly to the speaker's professed object, 
nay, the very reverse ; the admiration will resemble that which is 

excited by a fine piece of poetry That it is possible to 

indulge in such exuberance of illustration, as to suspend the cur- 
rent of strong passions, and defeat the orator's avowed object, it is 
needless to say." 

Farther, he was either ignorant of the feelings of his audience, 
or too vehement and self-willed to try to conciliate them. "As a 
political tactician, Burke was far inferior to many of his contem- 
poraries. There was, in fact, a singular disproportion l)etween his 
knowledge of human nature in general, and his knowledge of in- 
dividual character; or, if he possessed the latter at all, he was 
strangely incapable of using it to any practical purpose. None 
understood better than he did, that abstract principles of policy 
must be mo iified by actually existing circumstances; yet this 
very same maxim, of such profound truth and such immense 
value, he showed a singular inability to apply to individual con- 
duct, on the small scale and within the limited sphere of parties. 
In the conduct of any measure, he never deigned to consult pre- 
judices or to soften enmity. He had no patience to bear with folly; 
he was only irritated by it So far from any attempt lo couciliate 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 4G1 

his political opponents, he often exasperated hostility by setting 
them all at open defiance, and would frequently jtour out the most 
bitter scorn and invective, wiien the most guarded and temperate 
style (if expression was essential to success. Never checking the 
impetuosity of his jiassions, he often contended for mere trifles 
with a pertinacity which could only have been justified in the 
defence of principles of vital importance ; trifles, the timely and 
graceful concession of which would have insured success, which 
would have far more than connterba'anced such a sacrifice. Ho 
never seemed nicely to calculate, with a view to his own conduct, 
the temper and conduct of the House, or the exact relation of 
parties in it ; thus he never cared to conceal or disguise his 
opinions on any subject whatever, but uniformly expretiged them 
boldly and fully. Now, though we may admire the blunt hon- 
esty of such conduct, none can commend its jirudence; nothing 
but the most imperious necessity could justify it." 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1728-1774. 

Goldsmith's life offers an exception to the usual even tenor of 
the literary career. His fortunes were as chequered as restless 
imprudence and romantic generosity could make them. His father 
was a goo !-hearted Irish clergyman, the supposed original of 
Dr Primrose in the ' Vicar of Wakefield,' and of the kindly old 
preacher in the 'Deserted Village.' Oliver was born at Pallas, in 
Longford, the fourth of a family of seven. When he was two 
years old his father removed to the more comfortable living of 
Lissoy, in West Meath. His first teacher was a garrulous old 
soldier, who had served under ISIarlborough, and delighted to en- 
tertain the boys with tales of marvellous adventure. He entered 
Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar, in the year of the great Jaco- 
bite rising, 1745. What he afterwards said of Parnell's college 
course may be applied to his own — *• His progress through the 
college course of study was probably marked with but little splen- 
dour ; his imagination might have been too warm to relish the 
cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius ; 
but it is certain that as a classical scholar few could equal him." 
He had no liking for mathematics, but, as he afterwards boasted, 
he could "turn an ode of Horace with any of them." He is said 
to have more than once been in diflBculties with the heads of the 
college from his love uf boisterous frolic. He left college with no 
fixed aim. His father designed him for the Church, but after he 
had spent two years at home in preparation, he failed to give 
satisfaction to the bishop, and could not obtain orders. He next 
thought of the law, and set off for London ; but falling into good 
company at Dublin, he spent all his money there, and returned 



462 FROM 1760 TO 17'.)0. 

lionie in disgrace. He was then fitted out for the study of medi- 
cine in Edinburgh, but was nuich too restless to pass decorously 
tlirousih the ordinary curriculum and settle down into a quiet 
practice. After studying (or at least staying) two ye;irs in Edin- 
burgh, he went off to tlie Continent, and spent some time in the 
medical schools of Leyden and Louvain. Thereafter, in a restless 
spirit of adventure, he wandered through Switzerland, Italy, and 
France, supporting himself mainly, it is said, by playing on the 
flute for food and lodging. In 1756 he returned to London, and 
there tried various ways of making a livelihood ; being succes- 
sively assistant to an a|»othecary, physician (among the poorer 
orders), proof corrector in Kichaidson's jircss, usher in Dr Milner's 
school at Peckham, critic for the ']\Iontldy Iveview,' and usher 
again. In 1758 he tried to jiass at Surgeon's Hall as a hospital 
mate, but was rejected, and thus driven back finally on literature. 
His first inde[tendent work was ' The Inquiry into the State of 
Polite Learning in Eurojie,' which a])peared anonymously in 1759. 
From that dite till his death, in 1774, he received steady work 
from the booksellers, and but for his imprudent generosity and love 
of finery, might have lived in comfort, if not in luxury. His chief 
productions were — ' The P)ee,' a weekly periodical, which reached 
only eight numbers, lasting through October and November. 1759; 
'Chinese Letters,' contributed to Newbery's 'Public Ledger' in 
1760, and afterwards published separately under the title of 'The 
Citizen of the World'; 'The History of England, in a series of 
Letters from a Nobleman to his Son,' 1762 ; 'The Vicar of Wake- 
field,' written and sold in 1764, but not published till 1766 ; 'The 
Traveller,' 1764; the comedy of 'The Good-Natured ]\Ian,' per- 
formed in 1768; 'History of Iiome,' 1769; ' The Deserted Village,' 
1770; 'History of England,' in four volumes, 1771 ; 'She Stoops 
to Conquer,' performed in 1773; 'History of Animated Nature,* 
1774- 

" The Doctor," as he was called, had not a handsome exterior. 
Miss Reynolds once toasted him as "the ugliest man she knew." 
Boswell says — " His person was short, liis countenance coarse and 
vulgar, his deportment that of the scholar awkwardly affecting the 
easy gentleman." Judge Day's description is moie favourable: 
" In persi)n he was short — about five feet five or six inches; strong 
but not heavy in make; rather lair in conip'exion, with brown 
hair — such, at least, as could be distinguished from his wig. His 
features were plain but not repulsive — certainly not so when 
lighted up by conversation. His manners were simple, natural, 
and perhaps on the whole, we may say, not polished; at least, 
without the refinement and good-l)reeding which the exquisite 
polish of his compositions would lead us to expect" 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 4G3 

His naturally strong constitution was soon impaired by his 
hardshiiis. At the a^e of thirty-nne he wrote thus to his brother : 
" Though I never had a day'b sickness since I saw you, yet I am 
not that strong active man you once knew me. You scarcely can 
conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and 
study, have worn me down." The climate of London was trying 
to him, and he frequently had to recruit by taking lodgings in the 
country. 

The strong points of Goldsmith's intellect centred in his power 
of easy and graceful literary com|)Osition. He was not a profound 
scholar, and his mind was neither very comjirehensive nor very 
productive. His fame rests upon the charms of his style : he tried 
nearly every kind of composition — poetry, comedy, fiction, hisiory, 
essay-writing, natural science — and, as Johnson said in his well- 
known epitaph, " \vhatever he touched he adorned." He criticised, 
as he wrote, with exquisite taste. The fragments that Mr Forster 
has reprinted from the ' Monthly Review,' Goldsmith's earliest 
performances, are models of just criticism. His delicately sym- 
pathetic nature was a peculiar qualilication for appreciating the 
works of others. This also gave him his singular power of reading 
character. His drawing of the members of the Liierary Club, in 
the poem " Re'aliation," is a supreme work of art. On the strength 
of Garriclc's well-known epigram — 

"Here lies ]ioet Goldsmith, for sliortness called Noll, 
Who wrote like an augel, but talked like poor Toll " — 

it has sometimes been said that he was very dull in conversation, 
and that in the Literary Club he was often made a butt. As 
Boswell admits, his cimversational dulness has been much exag- 
gerated. Undoubtedly he was quicker with his pen than with his 
tongue, A man of fine taste needs time to mature his thoughts ; 
and Goldsmith, careless of his reputation, often opened his mouth 
without the least premeditation. As to his being made a butt, it 
Avas part of his jieculiar humour to sacrifice himself for the amuse- 
ment of the company by affecting ridiculous vanity and stupidity. 
Many of the anecdotes of his vanity bear evidence of the stolidity 
of the narrators — their incapibility of understanding a joke or 
entering into the fun of humorous affectation. 

In the matter of emotion, he was one of those beings that are 
often found in extremes. When fortune went well with him, he 
was as happy as the d;iy was long. So mobile were his sympa- 
thies that he could not be sad in merry company, and msls easily 
beguiled out of his sorrows. Yet he w^as also easily dispirited, and 
often took dark views of the future. Self-respect kept him from 
making many confidants of his heartless anticipations. He often 
assumed an appearance of gaiety when there was no small anxiety 



464 FROM 17G0 TO 1790. 

within ; but we find him, in an affectionate letter to his brother in 
Ireland, complaining of a " settled melancholy" and "gloomy 
hal'its of thinking"; and he soiiu'tinies laid his cares before his 
sturdy friend Johnson. After a ha|>[)y deliverance from gloomy 
apprehensions, he would entertain his friends with ludicrous pic- 
tures of his previous distress. He was a warm friend and a 
generous enemy ; quick to take offence and easily pacifiud. His 
heart overflowed with tenderness : he loved the ha[ipy faces of 
children, and could not bear to see misery. With his rare skill iu 
divining the tlioughts of others, and detecting what they prided 
themselves upon, he might have been a stinging satirist ; but his 
tenderness, though it could not restrain, always induced him to 
soften the dart. 

The imprudence of his conduct has often been dilated upon. 
As a young mm he was flighty, and more bent upon seeing the 
world than willing to subside into a staid professional career. His 
life was one long battle with imprudence. He was thirty-one 
when he finally settled down to authorship ; and then he never 
thought of laying up money for an evil day, but spent faster than 
he earned, and died two thousand pounds in del>t. " His purse 
replenished," says Judge Day, "the season of relaxation and 
jileasure tO'k its turn, in attending the theatres, Ranelagh, Vaux- 
hall, and other scenes of gaiety and amusement. When his funds 
were dissipated — and they fled more rapidly from his being the 
dupe of many artful persons, male and female, who ])ractised upon 
his benevolence — he returned to his literaiy labours, and shut him- 
self up from society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and 
fresh supplies for himself." There are several well known anec- 
dotes of his imprudent generosity. On one occasion about the 
beginning of his career as an author, he pawned a suit of clothes 
that he had on loan to save his landlady from an execution for 
debt. Throughout all his struggles he continued to sen! money 
to his poor mother in Ireland ; and when he died, "on the stairs 
of his apartment there was the lamentation of the old and infirm, 
and the sobbing of women, poor objects of his charity, to whom 
he had never turned a deaf ear." 

Opinions. — Goldsmith is not known to have held strong opinions, 
as Johnson did, either in politics or in sectarian religion. He was 
more of an observer than of a doctrinaire. He had seen much of 
mankind, and interested himself more in noting characteristic ex- 
pression and conduct than in gaining adherents to any favourite 
views. The point of view of the Chinese Letters is characteristic. 
Himself emancipated by temperament and education from nearly 
every mode of traditionary prejudice, he regarded as al'Surd and 
mischievous many of the English opinions, customs, and institu- 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 405 

tions. But he did not attack these directly, as Mr Matthew Ar- 
nold has lately done, in his own proper [lerson. He assumed the 
person of a philosophic Chinaman, and showed, in the form of let- 
ters to friends in the East, how i^^nglish ways appeared in the eyes 
of a "Citizen of the World." in these letters he not only expresses 
surprise at superhcial absurdities in dress, in pulilic ceremonies, 
and suchlike, and at such incongruities as charging admission-fees 
to tombs and other memorials of great men, but also strikes at 
graver subjects, at the law of divorce, at iniquities in the ad- 
ministration of justice, at the abuses of Church patronage, at the 
frivolous causes of great wars, and similar matters of more serious 
import. 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — The best evidence of Goldsmith's wide command 
of language is his excellence in so many different kinds of compo- 
sition. The remarkable thing is his combination of purity with 
copiousness. He is more copious than Addison ; and, while no less 
simple than that master of simple language, he never is affectedly 
easy, never condescends to polite slang. One is safe to assert that 
no writer of English is at once so co]>ious and so pure. 

Sentences and Paragraphs. — The light and graceful structure of 
Goldsmith's sentences cannot be too much admired. It would be 
interesting to find out what preceding writer he is most indebted 
to. We may concede to Boswell and to Dr Nathan Drake that in 
some respects he belongs to the "Johnsonian school." Had Gold- 
smith written before Johnson, he would prol)al>ly have constructed 
his sentences as loosely as Addison. He may have learnt from 
Johnson to observe grammar more strictly than was usual with the 
Qneen Anne writers, to balance clauses, and to round off his sen- 
tences without leaving inelegant tags. Probably he caught these 
jiarts of his skill from Johnson, though none but the greater gram- 
matical accuracy can be said to have been originated by "the great 
lexicographer." But in other respects his style is so unlike John- 
son's that it needs some practice in criticism to discover any re- 
semblance whatsoever. Not to speak of Goldsmith's simple diction 
and exquisite melody, which make a sufficient disguise for the 
general reader, his sentences are much shorter, less condensed, and 
less abrupt. When we remember Goldsmith's acquaintance with 
French literature, we can hardly help ascribing some of the merits 
of his style to the influence of the French. 

In the following specimens of his style, taken from his earliest 
work, the 'inquiry into the Piesent State of Polite Learning,' we 
catch an occasional echo of Johnson ; but the general istruciure is 
much lighter and more graceful : — 

"If we examine the state of learning in Germany, we shall find that tha 

2 Q 



4G6 Fi:OM 17G0 TO 1791. 

Germans early dis'^ovproil a p:ission for polite literaturo ; but mil (ippily, like 
conriuenirs who, iiivailiiii,' tin' doiniuiniis of others, li^Mve their own to .k'so- 
latioii, instcail of .sluiiymi^ the Oeniiaii toiii^uo, they eontiiiued to write, in 
Liitiii. 'I'lius, while they cultivated an obsolete langiiaj^e, aud vainly laboured 
to api'ly it to modern manners, they neglected their own. 

"At the same time, also, they began at the wrong end, — I mean by being 
commentators ; and though tiiey have given many instanees of their indus- 
try, they liive seai-e(dy allonlcd any of genius. Jf criticism could have im- 
]U"ovcd the taste of a |ieo|ile, the Germans would liave been the most p^ilite 
nation alive. We sli dl nowhere beliold tlie learned wenr a more imp.iitant 
apiiearance than here; nowhere more dignified with profesS'ir>hips, or dressed 
out in the fojipcries of scliolastie finery. However, they seem to earn all the 
liononr of this kind which tliey enjoy. Tlieir assiduity is unjmralieied ; and 
did tliey employ half those hours on study which they bestow on read'iig, 
we might be induced to p ty as well as praise their jiainfu! pre-eminence. 
I5ut, guilty of a fault too common to great readers, they write through vol- 
umes while they do not think through a page. Never i'atigued themselves, 
they think the reader can never be weary; so tliey drone on, sa3'ing all that 
can be said on the subject, not selecting what may be advanced to the pur- 
pose. Were angels to write books, they never would write folios." 

Again — 

" The French nobility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying 
the vanity of an author, without indulging his avarice. A man of literary 
merit is snn^ of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His 
pension from the Crown just su]>plies half a com])ete,nce, and the sale of his 
labours makes some small a'idition to his circnnistances. 'i'hus the author 
leads a life of splendiil poverty, and seldom beconuvs wealthy or indolent 
enough to discontinue an exerti<in of those abilities by whiih he rose. With 
the English it is diilerent. Our writers of rising merit are generally neglected, 
while the few of an established reputation are oveijiaid by luxurious afllu- 
ence. The young encounter every hardship which generally attends ujion 
as]iiring indigence ; the old enjoy the vulvar and perhaps the more i>rndent 
satisfaction of jiutting riches in competition with fame. Those are olten 
seen to spend their youth in want and obscurity; these are sometimes found 
to lead an old age of indolence and avarice. But such treatment must natu- 
rally l)e expected from Englishmen, whose national chaiacter is to be slow 
and cautious in making i'riends, but violent in friendships once contracted." 

Once more, in a criticism of Gray's Odes, he says — 

"We cannot without regret behold talents so cajt.ible of giving pleasure 
to all, exerted in efforts tliat at best can amuse only the lew : we cannot 
behold this rising poet seeking fame among the learned, without hinting to 
him the advice that Isocrates used to give his scholars, Sludij the people. 
This study it is tint ha.-i conducted the great ma-ters of antiquity up to 
immortality. Pindar himself, of whom our modern lyrist is an imitator, 
appi'ars entirely guided by it. He adapted his works exactly to the disposi- 
tions of his countrymen. Irregular, enthusiastic, and quick in transition, 
he wrote for a ])eo|ile inconstant, of warm imagination, and extpiisite scnsi- 
bility. He chose the most popular subjects, auil all his allusions are to cus- 
toms well known in his days to the meanest person." 

Fu/urea of Speech. — Goldsmith resembles Johnson in the neglect 
of ornamental similitudes. To say so i.s, howuver, to use ".simili- 
tudes " in the sensp u[ similes, or formal similitudes. The remark 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 467 

does not apply as regards metaphors. Goldsmith's style is too 
much elevated by metaphors to be called plain. He is not so plain 
a writer as Addison; his style has (to use Ben Jonson's expression) 
more "blood and juice." Thus — 

"The other countries of Europe may be considered as immersed in ignor- 
ance or making but feeble efforts to rise. S[iaiii has long fallen I'roin amaz- 
ing Europe with her wit, to amusing them with the greatness of her catliolic 

credulity." 

Again — 

"Men like these, united by one bond, pursuing one design, spend their 
labour and their lives in making their fellow-creaiures happy, and in rejiair- 
ing the breaches caused byanihition. In this light, the meanest philosopher, 
though all his possessions are his lamp or his cell, is more truly valuable than 
he whose name echoes to the shout of the million, and who stands in all the 
glare of atlnuration. In this light, though poverty and contemptuous neglect 
are all the wages of his goodwill from mankind, yet the rectitude of his in- 
tention is an ample recompense ; and self-applause for the j)iesent, and the 
alluring ])rospect of fame for futurity, reward his labours. The peis[iective 
of life hiightens upon us, when terminated by an object so charming. Every 
intermediate image of want, banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from 
its distant influence. With this in view, the patriot, philosopher, and poet, 
have often looked with cahuness on disgrace and famine, and rested on their 
straw with cheerful serenity. Even the last terrors of departing nature ahate 
of their severity, and look kindly on him who considers his suilerings as a 
passjiort to immortality, and lays his sorrows on the bed of fame." 

Contrast. — As sufficiently appears in the preceding quotations, he 
was taken with the charm of rhetorical antithesis, and laboured to 
deliver his sayings in an antithetical form. In Ids 'Polite Learn- 
ing' we can read but few sentences without encountering a formal 
" point " ; and here and there we find the general sparkle condensed 
into the brilliancy of an epigram. 

The following are examples of his epigrams :— 

"Cauti(ms stujiidity is always in the right." 

" We see more of the world by travel, more of human nature by remain- 
ing at home." 

" We grow learned, not wise, by too long a continuance at college." 
'♦To imitate nature was found to be the surest way of imitating antiiiuity." 
"The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal 
them." 1 

The peculiar -artifice of ending off a sentence with an tmexpected 
turn is of the nature of epigram. Of this artifice we miirht cull 
numerous examples from Goldsiuith. It peculiarly suited his gay 
volatility. We take the three following from the narrative of the 
Man in Black ; ^ 

1 Epigrams similar to this occur in South, Butler, Young, and Voltaire. 

2 Tile l\lan in Black is usually said to be modelled on the real character of 
Goldsmith's father. The father of the Man in Black is ohviously drawn from 
Ooldsndth's father ; the Man in Black is no less obviously intended by Gold- 
smith for a portrait of himself. 



468 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

"After I liail resided at college for seven years, my father died, and left 
me — his blessing." 

" Fi iemlsliip ! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in 
every calmiiity ; to thee the wretelie.l se.-lv tor siiccnnr; on thee tiie care-tin-d 
son of nii.-.erv fondly nlies ; Ironi thy kind assistance the unfortunate always 
hojies for relief, and may ever he sure of — disapitointnient !" 

" A sohlier does not exnlt more when he counts over the wounds he has 
received, tlian a female veteran when she nlates the wounds she has formerly 
given : exhaustless when slie befiins a narrative of the former deatli-dealing 
power of lier eyes. She tells of tlie knij,'iit in gold lace, who died with a 
single frown, and never rose again till — lie was married to his maid ; of the 
squire vviio, being cruelly denied, in a rage flew to the window, and lifting 
up the sasii, threw himself in an agony — into his arni-cludr ; of the parson 
who, crossed in love, resolutely swallowed opium, which banished the stings 
of despised love — by making him sleep." 

Minor Figures. — Goldsmith sometimes assumes a declamatory 
style, with oratorical interrogation and answer, and paragraphs in 
the form of a climax. In these declamations there is usually a 
tincture of mock-heroism. Thus — 

"What, then, are the proper encourngements of genius? I answer. Sub- 
sistence and resjiect ; i'or these are rewards congenial to its nature. Every 
animal has an aliment suited to its constitution. The heavy ox seeks 
nourishment from earth ; the light chameleon has been supposed to exist on 
air ; a sparer diet than even this will satisfy the mau of true genius, i'or he 
makes a luxurious bancpiet upon empty applause. It is this alone which 
has inspired all that ever was truly great and noble among us. It is, as 
Cict-ro huely calls it, the echo of virtue. Avarice is the passion of inferior 
natures ; money the pay of the common herd. The author who draws his 
quill merely to take a purse, no more deserves success than he who presents 
a pistol." 

QUALITIES OF STYLK 

SimpUcity. — The specimens already quoted afford a fair measure 
of his simple language and simple structure. Goldsmith is among 
the simplest of our writers. In one aspect he differs from Addi- 
son : his diction is more metaphorical, farther elevated above the 
language of common life. This is borne out by our quotations. 
]^)Ut in another and more striking aspect he resembles Addison : 
his simplicity is an elegant simplicity. He is not homely like 
I'aley, nor coarse like Swift. This, also, is sufficiently apparent 
v.'ithout farther illustration. 

To write with simplicity on some of Goldsmith's themes was 
comparatively easy. Others could not have been treated in a 
simple style without a considerable effort. In particular, some 
of his 'Animated Nature' must have tried his powers of simple 
exposition. Where he had objects to describe — birds, beasts, or 
fishes — he probably experienced no difficulty except in mastering 
the details. But sometimes he is called upon to expound general 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 469 

principles, and then we have an opportunity of seeing the extent 
of his art. Tlie following is his account of the attraction of 
gravity. In some parts the language miglit possibly be made 
more familiar without becoming less exact ; but his manner of 
approaching the subject, and the easy sequence of the thoughts, 
are eminently popular. He seems at the end of every sentence 
to place himself in the position of the reader — to weigh its effect 
from the reader's point of view, to study what might be expected 
next, and how to carry the reader easily forward to the next 
idea : — 

"Modern philosophy has taught us to believe, that when the great 
Author of nature began the work of creation, he chose to operate by second 
causes; and that, suspending the constant exertion of his power, he endued 
matter with a quality by which the universal economy of nature might be 
continued, witliout his imniediiite assistance. This quality is called attrac- 
tion, a siirt of approximating influence, which all bodies, whether terrestrial 
or celestial, are iound to possess ; and which, in all, increases as the quantity 
of matter in each increases. The sun, by far the greatest boily in our system, 
is, of consequence, possessed of nnich the greatest share of this attracting 
power ; and all the planets, of whicii our eartli is one, are of course entirely 
subject to its sujterior influence. Were this power, therefore, left uncon- 
trolled by any other, the sun must quickly have attracted all the bodies of 
our celestial system to itself ; but it is ecjually counteracted by another 
power of e(|ual eflicacy ; namely, a jirogressive force which each jdanet re- 
ceived when it was impelled forward by the divine Architect upon its first 
foiniation. The lieavcnly bodies of our system being thus acted ujion by 
two opposing powers — namely, by that of attraction, which draws them to- 
wards the sun, and that of impulsion, which drives them straight forward 
into the great void of space — they pursue a track between these contrary 
directions; and each, like a stone whirled about in a sling, obeying two 
opposite forces, circulates round its great centre of heat and motion." 

Clearness. — As we have frequently noticed in treating of simple 
writers, it is vain to expect in union with simplicity the somewhat 
antagonistic merit of precision. Goldsmith is no exception: he is 
not careful to observe mathematical accuracy. Thus, in the above 
passage, a mathematician would object to the phrase, " equally 
counteracted by another power of equal efficacy," as an expression 
for the action of centrifugal relatively to centripetal force. In 
exact language, it would rather apply to two equal forces acting 
in direct opposition, and so bringing things to a stand-still. 

Strength. — Had the bent of Goldsmith's genius been for the 
sublime, the works that he undertook gave him ample oppor- 
tunities of displaying his powers. His periodical essays, as their 
purpose demanded, were chiefly upon the lighter topics. But in 
his ' History of the Earth and of Animated Nature' (to quote the 
title at full length), he was free to describe the grandeurs of 
nature as well as the beauties and the curiosities ; and he pre- 
ferred the beautiful, the odd, and the instructive to the sublima 



470 Fi;OM 17G0 TO 1790. 

So in his histories there was plenty of room for lofty declamation; 
but he shows no inclination to avail himself of sucli opi)ortunitie9. 
Let us take, for instance, his reflections on the death of Caesar, 
and on the extinction of tlie Western Empire of Home — both good 
openings for the elo(pient worshipper of greatness. The following 
is his peroration on Ciesar, more remarkable for sound judgment 
than for eloquence : — 

" CiBsar was killed in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and about fourteen 
years after he bet^an the conquest of the world. If we exMiuiiie his history, 
we sliall he e(jually at a loss whether most to admire his great abilities or 
his wonderful fortune. To ])rctend to say that fiom the b-^giniiing he 
planned the subjeetion of his native counti'y, is doing no great credit to ids 
well-known penetration, as a tliousand obstacles lay in liis way, which 
fortune, rather than conduct, was to surmount. No man, tiierefore, of his 
sagacity, would liave begun a seheme in which the chances of succeeding 
were so many against him : it is most probable that, like all very successful 
men, he only matie the best of every occurrence ; and his ambition rising 
with his good fortune, from at first being contented with humbler aims, he 
at last began to tliink of governing the worhl, wlieii he found scarce any ob- 
stacle to oi)[)Ose his designs. Such is the dispositi«in of man, whose cravings 
after power are always most insatiable when he enjoys the greatest share." 

He dismisses the Roman Empire at the conclusioa of his 
* History of Rome ' with two sentences : — 

"Such was the end of this great empire, that had conquoreil mankind 
with its arms, and instructed the world with its wisdom ; tliat iiad listii by 
temperance, and that fell by luxury ; that had been establisiied by a spirit 
of patriotism, and tliat sunk into ruin when the empire was become so ex- 
tensive, that a Roman citizen was but an empty name. Its linal dissokitioa 
happened about live hundred and twenty-two years after tlie battle of Phar- 
salia ; an hundreil and forty-six after the removal of the imjierial seat to 
Constantinople ; and four hundred and seventy-six afier the nativity of our 
Saviour." 

Bolingbroke, Burke, or De Quincey would have concluded in a 
much loftier strain. 

Pathos. — Considering Goldsmith's natural tenderness and wide 
acquaintance with distress, one would expect his writings to be 
deeply tinged with pathos. In reality, however, he is not so 
I)athetic a writer as Sterne. His benevolence was jirobably more 
active than sentimental, just as Sterne's was more sentimental 
than active. His poems and his novel contain some of our very 
finest touches of pathos, Ijut in his ordinary prose we meet with 
comparatively few. The only deeply touching letter in his 
' Citizen of the World ' is one entitled " A City Ni-;ht Piece," 
and it in some parts is too distressing to be lingered over with 
melancholy pleasure, rather serving the moralist's end of making 
the reader uncomfortable : — 

"The clock just strnck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the 
socket, the watchman foigets the hour in slumber, the laborious and the 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 471 

happy are at rest, and nothing wakes hut meditation, guilt, revelry, and 
despair. The drunkard once more fills the dpstroyin.cc bowl, the robber 
walks Iiis jnidnisht round, and the suicide lifts liis guilty arm against his 
own sacred persm. 

"Let me no longer waste the night over the pages of antiquity or the 
sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the sulitmy walk, wliere Vanity 
ever clinnging, but a few liours past walked lieloie me, where slie kept up 
tlie pageant, and now like a Iroward clidd, seems hushed with her own 
ini|)ortunities. . . . 

" How few appear in those streets which but some few liours ago were 
crowded ! and tliose wlio appear now no longer wear their daily nuisk, iior 
attempt to hide tiieir lewdness or their misery. 

"But wlio are those wlio make tlie .streets their coucli, and find a short 
repose from wretidiedness at the doors of the opulent ? 'i'hese are strangers, 
■wanderers, and orpiians, whose circumstances are too hunilile to expect re- 
dress, and whose ilistresses are too great even for pit}'. Tiieir wretclieiiuess 
excites rather horror tlian jdly. Souie are witliout the covering even of 
rags, and others emaciated with disease: tlie world has disclaimed tliem; 
society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to naked- 
ness and liunger. . . . 

" Wliy was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of \vretches I cannot 
relieve ! Poor houseless creatures ! the wurld wid give you reproaches, but 
will not give you relief. The slightest misfortunes of the grrat, the most 
imaginary uneasiness of the lich, are aggravated with all the power of elo- 
quence, and held up to engage dur attention and sympathetic soirow. Tiie 
jioor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny; 
and every law wliich gives others security, becomes an enemy to them. 

" Wliy was this heart of mine framed with so much sensiiiility ? or why 
was not my fortune adaj)ted to its impulse? Tenderness, without a caiiacity 
of relieving, only makes the man who feels it moie wretclied than the object 
which sues lor assistance." 

The Lvdicrous. — Goldsmith surpasses all our humourists in the 
combination of delicate wit with extravagant fun. His fancy was 
of the lightest and airiest order, and his volatile spirit Mas easily 
warmed to the boiling-point of comical extravagance. "His 
comic writing," says Leigh Hunt, "is of the class wliich is per- 
haps as much preferred to that of a staider sort by people in 
general, as it is by the writer of these pages — comedy running 
into farce. ... It is that of the prince of comic writers, 
Moliere. The English have no dramatists to compare in this 
respect with the Irish. Farquliar, Goldsmith, and Sheridan sur- 
pass them all ; and O'Keefe, as a farce-writer, stands alone." 

The following passage from a letter written about the time when 
he commenced author, may be quoted as characteristic. He was 
far from being a happy self-complacent man, but the mere excite- 
ment of writing to a friend was enough to elevate him "o'er a' 
the ills o' life victorious." The sturdier, less inflammable siiirit of 
Burns, required stronger stimulants to raise it to the same pitch : — 

"God's curse, sir ! who am I? Eh ! what am I ? Do you know whom 
vou have otfended? A man whose cliaracter may one of tliese days be men- 



472 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

tioned with profounil respect in a German comment or Dutch Dictionary; 
whose name you will probably hear ushered in by a Doctissinius Doctissi- 
niorum, or heel-pieced with a long Latin terininaiion. Think, how Gold- 
smiihius, or Gubblegurcliius, or some such sound, as rough as a nutmeg- 
grater, will become me. ... I must own my ill-natured contemporaries 
have not hitherto paid me those honours I have had such just reason to 
expect. I have not yet seen Tny face reflected in all the lively display of 
red and white paints on any sign-posts in the suburbs. Your handkerchief- 
weavers seem as yet uiiacipiainted with my merits or my ])hysiogiioiny, and 
the very snutl'-box makers appear to have forgot their respect. Tell them 
all Ironi me, they are a set ot Gotliic, barbarous, ignorant scoundrels. There 
will come a day, no doubt it will," &c. 

His works contain many traces of this airy conquest of the ills 
of life. Beau Tibbs is made to describe his garret as " the first 
floor down the chimney " ; the Man in Black, when imprisoned, 
reflects that "he is now on one side the door, and those who are 
imconfined are on the other ; that is all the difierence between 
them : " and both are strokes of wit that may have consoled the 
author himself in similar circumstances. His incomi)arable " de- 
scription of an author's bed-chamber," ending with the couplet — 

" A night-cap decked his brows instead of bay, 
A cap by night — a stocking all the day " — 

may also be taken as a Iiumorous transfiguration of his own expe- 
rience. Take also the following anecdote related in the " Club of 
Authors" : — 

"I'll tell you a story, gentlemen, which is as true as that this pipe is 
made of clay. When I was delivered of my first book, I owed my tailor for 
a suit of clothes ; but that is nothing new, you know, and may be any man's 
case as well as mine. Well, owing him for a suit of clothes, and hearing 
that my book took very well, he sent for his money, and insisted on being 
]iaid immediately. Though I was at the time rich in fame, for my book ran 
like wild-fire, yet I was very short in money, at.d being unable to satisfy his 
demand, prudently resolved to keep my chamber, preferring a prison of my 
own choosing at home, to one of my tailor's choosing abroad. In vain the 
bailiffs used all their arts to decoy me from my citadel ; in vain they sent to 
let me know that a gentleman wanteil to speak with me at the next tavern; 
in vain they came with an nrcpnt message from my aunt in the country; in 
vain I was told that a particular friend was at the point of death, and de- 
sired to take his last farewell. 1 was deaf, insensilde, rock, adamant; the 
bailiffs could make no impression on my hard heart, for I effectually kept 
my liberty by never stirring out of my room." 

"This was all very well for a fortnight ; " but at the end of that 
time the unfortunate author was entrapped by "a splendid mes- 
sage from the Earl of Doomsday." He took coach and rode in 
high expectation to the residence, as he thought, of his noble pa- 
tron ; but on alighting, found himself, to his horror, at the door of 
a spunging-house. All the proceedings of this club of authors are 
in Goldsmith's hai)piest vein, and form a good illustration of his 



THEOLOGY. 473 

power of throwing a ludicrous colour over incidents uncomfortably 
near the reality of his own life. 

Goldsmith is also the most amiable of our satirists. He was full 
of "the milk of liuiii.ui kindness," and the range of his sympathies 
was wide. His ridicule is always on the side of good sense and 
good feeling. And he handles even his embodiments of folly and 
weakness " tenderly, as if he loved them " ; as if, at least, he had 
a lurking toleration for them, and secretly recognised their claim 
to exist in their own way as varieties of multiform humanity. 

The most exquisite of his humorous creations is Beau Tibbs, 
who figures in the letters of the ' Citizen of the World.' 



OTHER WRITERS. 
THEOLOGY. 

Few of the theologians that we reckon in this period were men 
of Irigh literary celebrity. The reason probably is that there was 
no exciting to])ic to vex the theological world, and put its foremost 
intellects upon their mettle. The Deists had been a hundred times 
answered before 1760, and no other heresy equally dangerous and 
exciting appeared until the ferment of the French Revolution. 
The great religious revival begun by Wesley and Whitefield gained 
no distinguished champions during the first half of the reign of 
George III. 

One of the most eminent divines of the generation was Samuel 
Horsley (1733-1806), who has been called " the last of the race of 
polemical giants in the English Cliurch — a learned, mighty, fear- 
less, and haughty cham|iion of the theology and constitution of the 
Anglican Establishment." His first efibrts in authorship were some 
mathematical tiacts. In 1776 he published propi)sals for a new 
edition of the works of Sir Isaac Newton. About the same time 
he wrote on Plan's Free Agency. His charge to the clergy of his 
archdeaconry in 17S3 involved him in a controversy with Priestley 
concerning the divinity of Christ : in which controversy he is said 
to have displayel great learning, masterly reasoning, and impetuous 
dogmatism. He was made Bisliop of St David's in 1788. When 
the French Revolution broke out, he stood forth in the front rank 
of alarmists, and declaimed with great vehemence against the "twin 
furies" — Jacobinism and Infidelity. His declamations against 
conventicles, and his disposition to favour penal laws against Dis- 
sent, brouL^ht him into collision with Robert Hall, who assails him 
as " the apologist of tyranny, and the patron of passive obedience," 
and describes a sermon of his as a " disgusting picture of sancti- 
monious hypocrisy and priestly insolence." Horsley had an arro- 
gance and dogmatism even fiercer than Warburtou's, without any- 



474 FROM 1760 TO 1700. 

thing like Warburton's genius for style. His sermons procured 
him respect from many that disapproved of his violence as a po- 
lemic : they are distinguished by breadth of view and clear racy 
ex p less ion. 

Beilby Porteous (1731-1808), Bishop of London, was a divine of 
a nuK-h milder type, aulhor of a poem "On Death," which gained 
the Seatonian prize in 1759, and the intimate associate of Hannah 
More, whom he is said to have assisted in the cnniposition of her 
religious novel, ' Cculebs in search of a Wife.' He wrote a life of 
his jiatron, Archbishop Seeker, and published a variety of sermons, 
charges, and other devotional tracts. His 'Evidences' is still used 
as a class-book in schools. 

The most distinguished Scottish theologian of the time was 
George Campbell, author of an aMe ' Disscrtntion on Miracles,' 
written in reply to Hume's Essay on ^liracles, and a 'New Trans- 
lation of thu Gospels, with Preliminary Dissertations,* a work dis- 
playing the highest critical sagacity. We shall notice him again 
among the writers on Rhetoric 

PHILOSOPHY. 

By far the most eminent psychologist of this generation is 
Thomas Eeid (1710-1796), the founder of what is known as the 
rhilosophy of Commcm Sense. He was a native of Kincardine- 
shire, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He 
studied for the Church, and in 1737 was presented to the living of 
New Machar, a parish near Aberdeen. In 1752 he was appointed 
Professor of Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. While in this 
office he took part in the meetings of a literary coterie, of great 
local celebrity, which comprised several men that attained emi- 
nence in the woild of letters — himself, Campbell, Beattie, and Ger- 
ard. In 1763 he was invited to succeed Adam Smith as Professor 
of Moral Philosojthy in Glasgow. His 'Inquiry into the Plumau 
Mind,' which had been discussed by his fiiends in Aberdeen, and 
had been in part submitted to Hume, was publislie 1 in i 764. The 
impulse to this work was given, as he said in the dedieation, by 
Hume's 'Treatise of Human Nature.' He had not previously 
"thought of calling in question the piinciples C(Uumonly received 
with regard to the human understanding;" but finding that, "by 
reasoning which appeared to him to be just," theie was built upon 
those principles " a system of scepticism which leaves no ground 
to believe any one thing rather than its contrary," he proceeded to 
subject the principles themselves to a close e.xamination. "For 
my own satisfaction, I entered into a serious examination of the 
princi[)les upon which the sceptical system is built; and was not a 
little surprised to find, that it leans with its whole weight upon a 



PiiiLOSoniY. 475 

hypothesis which is ancient indeed, and hatli been very generally 
reoiived l)y jiliilosophers, but of which I could hnd no solid proof. 
The hypothesis I mean is, That nothing is perceived but what is 
in the mind which perceives it: that we do not really perceive 
things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of 
them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impi'essions and 
ideas." The ' Incjuiry ' has a polemical tone throughout, and con- 
tains a good deal of humorous banter directed against Hume upon 
the assumption that the arch-sceptic is bound in consistency to 
believe " neither his own existence nnr that of his reader," and that 
"the intention of his work is to show that there is neither human 
nature nor science in the world." — Without attempting to define 
lleid's position relatively to modern analysts of the mind, we may 
give his views concerning the origin of knowledge in his own words. 
Against the opinion that all knowledge concerning external things 
is derived from the phenomena of Sense and the operations of the 
Intellect upon the phenomena, he contends that " many original 
principles of belief" are ^'' suggested hy owv sensations." "Sensa- 
tion suggests the notion of present existence, and the belief that 
what we perceive or feel does now exist. ... A beginning of 
existence, or any change in nature, sugi:ests to us the notion of a 
cause, and compels our belief of its existence. And, in like man- 
ner, certain sensations of touch, by the constitution of our nature, 
suggest to us extension, solid it;/, and motion, which are nowise like 
to sensations, although they have been hitherto confounded with 
them." — After teaching in his Professorship till 1781, lleid pre- 
pared a more systematic exposition of the Mind, which appeared 
in two parts — 'Essays on the Intellectual Powers,' in 1785 ; and 
' Essays on the Active Powers,' in 17 88. He continued his studious 
activity till the very close of his long life, writing philoso})hical 
essays, working mathematical problems, and following the progress 
of physical science. — "In point of bodily constitution, few men 
have been more indebted to nature than Dr Reid. His form was 
vigorous and athletic ; and his muscular force (though he was 
somewhat under the middle size) uncommonly great ; advantages 
to which his habits of temperance and exercise, and the unclouded 
serenity of his temper, did ample justice." The mere fact of his 
originating a school of ])liilosoiihy, even though we allow that his 
conclusions were supported by popular feeling, argues a large meas- 
ure of intellectual force, in one direction or another; but very dif- 
ferent opinions have been expressed as to his capacities for mental 
analysis. Various particulars in his style and in his favourite 
studies indicate a tendency to dwell by preference upon the con- 
crete. He had no great turn for style ; Ids composiiion deserves 
the praise of " ease, perspicuity, and purity " ; it is, besides, neat 
and finished, and often moves with considerable spirit : but it has 



476 FKOM 17G0 TO 1791. 

neither the incisive vigour of Campbell, the copiousness of Smith, 
nor the original freshness of Tucker. 

Abraham Tucker (1705-1774), author of 'The Light of Nature 
Pursued, l)y ICdward Search, Esq.' — a work in seven volumes, four 
of which were published in 1765, and the remainder after his 
death — is in point of style one of the most pleasing of our philo- 
sophical writers. The son of a wealthy London merchant, having 
received an Oxford education and acquired many elegant accom- 
plishments, he bought an estate near Dorking, and there lived a 
"retired and undiversitied " life, "the exercise of his reason being 
his daily employment." He declined the political business that 
Burke held to be a duty intrusted to men of his station, and 
spent his time in a soft Epicurean endeavour to realise the maxi- 
mum of trancpiil happiness. He "apportioned his time between 
study and relaxation ;" and, when in London, "commonly devoted 
much of his evenings to the society of his friends, relations, and 
fellow-collegians, among whom he was particularly distinguished 
for his dexterity in the Socratic method of disputation." We may 
indicate his philos()])hical position in a loose compendious way Vjy 
saying that he based his psychology upon Hartley's, and that his 
original ethical views are adopted, digested, and systematised in 
Paley's ' floral Philosophy.' Paley candidly acknowledges his 
obligations. "There is one work to which I owe so much, that it 
would be ungrateful not to confess the obligation; I mean the 
writings of the late Abraham Tucker, Esq. I have found in this 
writer more original thinking and observation ujjon the several 
subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say 
in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is un- 
rivalled. P>ut his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, 
and irregular work. I shall account it no mean praise, if I have 
been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads 
and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, 
what in that otherwise excellent performance is spread over too 
much surface." — Tucker's style has several charms rarely met in 
philosophical works — charms, indeed, that are more or less incom- 
patible with rigorous scic:ntific jirecision. The diction is simple, 
thickly intersi)ersed with colloquial idioms, and has an exquisitely 
musical flow. In every other sentence we are delighted with some 
original felicity of expression or of illustration. The loose and 
often ungramniatical structure of the sentences, and the ditlusive 
rambling character both of the work as a whole and of the seveial 
divisions, forbid his being taken as a model for strict scientilic 
exposition ; but the popiilar expositor of practical wisdom might 
learn a great dial from his copious and felicitous language and 
imagery. Obviously, however, it will not do even for popular 
purposes to imitate him closely. The expense of his voluminous 



PHILOSOPHY. 477 

treatise may have something to do with the general neglect of so 
ingenious a writer ; but at any rate it is significant again.st close 
imitation of his style that the views of Happiness and Virtue in 
Paley's ' Moral Philosophy,' which are simply Tucker's summarised 
and formulated, are never referred to their original author. 

Richard Price (1723-1791) — a Dissenting minister in London, 
who supported the cause of American Indei)endence, and who was 
vehemently abused by Burke because from his puli)it in Old Jewry 
Lane he hailed the French Pievolution as the advent of Liberty 
— made himself a considerable name in Ethical Philosophy. His 
'Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals' was 
published in 1758. "He apjtears as the antagonist of the empiri- 
cism popularly associated with the name of Locke, and as the 
leading representative of his time in England of the double origin 
of knowledge. The doctrine of Price with respect to the Good 
and the True reminds ns more of the Pure Peason of his great 
German contemporary Kant, than of the internal and common- 
sense school of Hutcheson and Reid." He also " reveals affinities 
to Platonism." ^ His style displays in no eminent degree either 
of the cardinal virtues of a philosophical work; he is not remark- 
ably perspicuous, and he is far from being remarkably precise. 
His numerous political and economical pamphlets are written with 
considerable eneigy, "not unfitly typified by the unusual muscular 
and nervous activity of his slender jierson." 

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), a Unitarian minister, illustrious 
in Natural Science as the discoverer of oxygen and other elementary 
substances, was an irrepressibly voluminous writer not only in science 
but in theology, jihilosophy, history, politics, and whatever hap- 
pened to engage his interest. At the age of twenty-two he became 
pastor to a Dissenting congregation, and from that time till 1773 
he occupied various situations as minister and as tutor, and began 
to make himself a name by his theological and scientific writings. 
From 1773 the patronage of the Earl of Shelbnrne enabled him to 
devote the most of his time to scientific and literary jnirsuits. He 
rmade his discovery of oxygen in 1774. In the same year he wrote 
a severe examination of the Common-Sense Philosophy, defending 
the principles of Locke and Hartley. In his ' Disquisitions relat- 
ing to Matter and Spiiit,' 1777, he avowed himself a materialist, 
and showed that materialism did not affect the arguments for the 
existence of God, or for the belief in a future state. His ' History 
of the Corruptions of Christianity,' 1782, was attacked, as we 
have said, by Horsley, and a hot war in })amphlets was carried on 
through more than one stage of rejoinder and surrejoinder. Dur- 
ing the excitement of the French Revolution, his advanced opin- 
ions made him an object of aversion ; his house in Birmingham 
1 Professor Fraser, in tlie 'Imperial Dictionary of Biography.' 



478 FROM 17C0 TO 1700. 

was sucked by a mob ; and he was ultimately obliged to betake 
hijiiself to America. He died at Northumberland in Pennsylvania. 
— He is said to have been a man of mild, urbane manners, and to 
have won the personal favour of very bigoted antagonists when he 
met them face to face. Brougham rather misrepresents him iu 
describing him as "a fierce and angry polemic." He often writes 
severe things, but he writes with perfect command of temper. He 
cannot be chargeil with unprovoked abuse : his asperities are called 
forth by what he considers arrogance, conceit, or misrej)resentatioii 
on the part of others. " Those," he says, " wl>o are disposed to be 
civil t<i me shall meet with civility from me ir. return ;*and as to 
those who are otherwise disposed, I shall beliave to them as I may 
happen to be affected at the time." For his own part, whether 
right or wrong, he is exceedingly fair and can lid. His style is 
idiomatic, compact, incisive, and vigorous. He is eminently easy 
to follow: he usually describes the progress of his thoughts, ex- 
plains by what circumstances he was led to take such and such a 
view, and thus introduces us from the known to the unknown by 
an easy gradation. 

James Beattie (1735-1803), one of Dr Eeid's Aberdonian co- 
terie, whose reputation rests chiefly on his poetry, first came before 
the public in 1770 as an antagonist to Hume. He was a man of 
intensely personal, not to say spiteful feelings, inteinperately sen- 
sitive ; and his 'Essay on Truth' is written with anything but 
l)hilosophic calm. On the title-page he describes his work as 
"written in opposition to sophistry and scepticism," and through- 
out ascribes to his opponent the basest motives, and to his oppon- 
ent's writings the most degrading influences; claims for himself 
and his side the exclusive possession of love for truth, learning, 
mankind, and honourable fairness; anl declares repeatedly that 
none of Mr Hume's admirers understand him : in short, he offen- 
sively assumes a superiority to Hume in morals, and a superiority 
to Hume's followers in intellect. His style has considerable power 
of the rotund declamatory order; coi)ious, high-sounding, and 
elegant ; occasionally in its appeals to established feeling throw-ing 
out rhetorical interrogations, followed by brief, abrupt answers. 
His Essay was very ]>opular with the luiglish clergy, and exasper- 
ated the easy-minded Hume more perliaps than any of the numer- 
ous replies to his obnoxious opinions, lieattie wrote also in jirose 
several miscellaneous essays — 'On Poetry and Music' (1762); 
'On Laughter' (1764); 'On Classical Learning' (1769); and 
'Dissertations Moral and Critical ' (1783). 

Another of the Aberdonian coterie, perhaps the most powerful 
mind of the number, and of a very ditl'erent temper from Beattie, 
was George Campbell (1719-1796), already mentioned as an an- 
tagonist to Hume's ' Essay on Miracles.' Originally destined for 



PHILOSOPHY. 479 

the laAv, he changed his mind and entered the Church, was ap- 
pointed minister of Banchory-Ternan, was sul)sequently translated 
to one of the city charges in Aberdeen, and in 1759 l^ecame Prin- 
cipal of Marischal College. His first work wns the 'Dissertation 
on Miracles,' 1762. After several less-known performances, he 
published in 1776 his 'Philosophy of Rhetoric,' which is often 
spoken of as the most original work on that subject that had 
appeared since Aristotle. His ' New Translation of the Gospels' 
was published in 1778. — Campbell was a man of sturdy, sagacious 
intellect, and tolerant tem[ier. In controversy he Avas candid and 
generous, imputing no unworthy motives, and making no offensive 
claims to superior powers of discernment. His style is perspicuous 
and terse ; he writes as one possessing a clear comprehensive grasp 
of his subject, ;md an abundant choice of language. 

Along with Campbell may be mentioned Henry Home, Lord 
Karnes" (1696-1782), and Hugh Blair (1718-1799) ; both, like him, 
best known in general liteiature by their works on Englisli Com- 
position. Home was an Edinburgh lawyer of great social wit and 
literary tastes, who employed his leisure after his elevaiion to the 
bench in composing various works, metaphysical, social, and criti- 
cal — 'Principles of Morality and Natural Religion' (1751); 'Art 
of Thinking' (1761); ' Elements of Critici.-m ' (1762); ' Sketches of 
the History of Man' (1773); 'The Gentleman Earmer' (1777); 
'Loose Hints on Education' (1781). His diction is tolerably 
copious, and his turns of expression often have something of the 
crisp ingenuity of Hume's, but his sentences are not very skilfully 
put together ; his style wants flow. Curiously enough, his analysis 
of the mechanical artifices of sentence-making is one of the most 
substantial parts of his 'Elements'; it supi^lied both Campbell 
and lUair with all that they have to say on sentence-mechanism, 
and contains some ingenuities that they did not see fit to adopt. — 
Blair was a highly popular minister in Edinburgh, who, in 1759, 
following the example of Adam Smith, and also under the patron- 
age of the benevolent Maecenas, Lord Kames, began to read a 
course of lectures on Belles Lettres. A Chair of Rhetoiic being 
endowed in 1/62, Blair was appointed the first Professor. He 
published his course of lectures in 1783. He was the most jiojntlar 
sermon-writer of his day. His sermons, the first volume of which 
was published in 1777, were received with delighted applause in 
England ; were commended by Johnson ; and were translated into 
almost every language of Europe. His reputation is now consider- 
ably faded : works for which their admirers fondly predicted clas- 
sical immortality, are now universally neglected, fie vas a flow- 
ing, elegant writer, with no great pretensions to depth or origin- 
ality: his ' Rhetoric ' is a very vapid performance compared with 
Cami^beH's — " Campbell's," says Whately, " is incomparably supe- 



480 FKOM 1760 TO 1790. 

rior, not only in deptli of thmiirht anrl ingenious original research, 

but also ill ]>iai'ti("al utility to the stutlent." 

Adim Smith (1723-1790) is an important figure in the history 
of l''tliics, aud, as the author of the first systematic treatise on 
Pitiitic;,il Kconiimy, is entitled to tlie honour of being called the 
founder of that science. He was born at Kirkcaldy in Fifcshire, a 
]iost humous child. At the age of foMrteen he entered Glasgow 
College, and after a curriculum of three ^^ars, proceeded tiience 
with a Snell p].\liibition ti» Oxford. He was ex[iected to take 
orders in the Knglish Church, but he preferred returning to Scot- 
land and taking his chance of getting a professorship in one of the 
Universities. Settling in Edinburgh in 1748, he began to read 
lectures on Rhetoric under the patronage of Lord Kanies ; and 
siion after, in 1751, was elected Professor of Logic in the Univer- 
sity of Glasgow. In 1752 he ohtained the more coveted Chair of 
Moral Philosiiphy, a post made illustrious by Ciirmichael and 
Hutcheson. His 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' was published in 
1759. In 1763 he was induced to resign his professorship and 
undertake the eilucation of the j'oung Duke of P>ucclench. He 
travelled with his pu[)il for two or three years, and on his return 
witlidiew to his native town of Kirkcaldy, and a|>plied hnnself for 
ten years, with little interruption, to solitary study, the fruits of 
which at length appeared, in 1776, in his great work 'The Wealth 
of Nations.' During the last twelve years of his life he lud<l the 
ortice of Commissioner of Customs. Before his death he burnt all 
his unpublislied manuscripts with the exception of a few compara- 
tively unimportant essays. — Tn i)erson he was a grave preoccupied- 
looking man, of a stout middle size, with large features and large 
grey eyes, absent-minded in company, often incontinently talking 
to himself, and keeping up his rather i)Oor constitution by strict 
regularity and tempeiance. He was warm and affectionate in 
disposition, exceedingly unreserved, with simple frankness express- 
ing the thoughts of the moment, and with ready candour retract- 
ing his opinion if he found that he had spoken without just 
grounds. His intellectual proceedings were calm, patient, and 
regular : he mastered a subject slowly and circumspectly, and 
carried his principles with steady tenacity through multitudes of 
details tliat would have checked many men of greater mental 
vigour unendowed with the same invincible persistence. He was 
noted for his strength of memory, and hid a wide acquaintance 
with English, French, and Italian literature, his tastes inclining 
him to tlie so-cal ed classical school of Corneille, Haeine, Pope, and 
Gray. The piincipal feature of his ethical work is his tracing the 
operation of symjiaihy as the prime constituent of moral senti- 
nii!nts. "The purely scientific incpiiry is overlaid by practical and 
hortatory dissertations, and by eloquent delineations of character 



HTSTOrtY. 481 

and of beau-ideals of virtuous conduct. His style being thus 
pitclied to the popular key, he never [)ushes home a metaphysical 
analysis ; so that even his favourite theme, Sympathy, is not 
philosoi)hically sifted to the bottom." The most strilving doctrine 
in his 'Wealth of Nations' was his advocating the abolition of 
commercial restrictions— the doctrine of " Free Trade." Concern- 
ing the sometimes disputed originality of this wcirk, his editor, Mr 
M'Culloch, remarks: "Some of the most important doctrines em- 
bodied in the ' Wealth of Nations' had been distinctly announced ; 
and traces, more or less faint, of the remainder, may be found in 
various works published previou.sly to its appearance. But this 
lias little or nothing to do with the peculiar merits of Smith, and 
in no respect invalidates Ids claim to be considered as the real 
founder of the science of political economy. Some of the disjecta 
memlira had, indeed, been discovered, with indications of the 
others. But their importance, whether in a practical or scientific 
point of view, and their dependence, were all but wholly unknown. 
They formed an undigested mass, without order or any sort of 
rational connection, Avhat was sound and true being frequently (as 
in the theory of the economists) closely linked to what was false 
and contradictory. Smith was the enchanter who educed order 
out of this chaos. And in such complicated and difficult subjects, 
a higher degree of merit belongs to the party who first establisiies 
the truth of a new doctrine, and traces its consequences and limita- 
tions, than to him who may previously have stumbled upon it by 
accident, or who had dismissed it as if it were valueless." — Smith's 
style is perspicuous and melodious, and both the language and 
the imagery are cho.sen with admirable taste. Perhaps its chief 
value to the student arises from its copiousness, which sometimes 
amounts to diffuseness. He is jiarticularly rich in subjective 
language. It is a good exercise for the ethical or the economical 
expositor to run over his pages and note his various modes of ex- 
pressing the same facts or principles. The construction of his 
sentences is loose, and wanting in vigour. 

HISTORY. 

During this period two historians sustained and advanced the 
higher ideal of historical composition furnished by David Hume. 
Robertson pul>iished his 'History of Scotland' in the last year of 
the reign of George 11. (1759), and Gibbon his 'Decline and Fall 
of the lioman Empire' in the first year of the last quarter of the 
century (1776). Robertson's History was the greatest success 
that had been achieved by any historical work up to that time ; 
and Gibbon's was still more successful than Robertson's. 

William Robertson (1721-1793), the son of an Edinburgh 

'Z II 



482 FROM 1760 TO 1790. 

minister, received tlie usual Scotch scliool and college education, 
entered the E.-tal)lished Church, and at the early age of twenty- 
two was ordained to the charge of the small parish of Gladsniuir 
in Ea.st Lothian. The lightness of his clerical duties left him 
ample time fur study as well as for extra-parochial activity: he 
read and wrote with methodical industry, attended the meetings of 
a distinguished literary society in Edinburgh, and made such a 
fii;ure in the delates of the General Assembly of the Church, that 
he soon was recognised as the leader of the "Moderates." Jn 
1759 appeared his ' History of Scotland,' the first edition of which 
was sold within a month ; and in the same year he was translated 
to the charge of Old Greyfriars' in Edinburgh. In 1762 he was 
appointed Piinci[)al of the University. In 1769 he completed 
■what is generally regarded as his masterpiece, the ' History of 
Charles V. ' ; in 1777 his 'History of America,' which grew natu- 
rally out of the ' History of Charles.' His only other published 
work, the ' Disquisition on Ancient India,' appeared in 1791, about 
two years before his death. — Robust in personal build, a l)road, 
square-shouldered man, rather over the middle height, with a large 
head and large features, Robertson v/as no less robust in intellect. 
He seems to have been well fitted for active life : he displayed 
great sagacity and firmness as a leader in the General Assembly ; 
and the common saying about him is that he would have been 
better employed in acting history than in writing it. He took 
great pains both with the ct)niposition of his History and with the 
collection of the facts. He particularly i)rided himself, and with 
justice, upon his accuracy. After all the labour that he spent 
upon his style, and all the praises that have been lavished upon 
its purity and correctness, it is not of much value to the student 
of composition. It is undoubtedly pure and correct : it contains 
no Scotch idioms and no grammatical inaccuracies ; but neither 
does it contain many peculiarly English idioms ; and it possesses 
little original charm of expression. Some of the admirers of 
Robertson allege as a peculiar merit of his style that it can be 
readily turned into Latin ; and this is another way of saying that 
it is not distinctively idiomatic. Indeed nothing else was to be 
expected : he had no opportunities of hearing English as it was 
spoken, and learned it almost as a foreign language from books. 
The wonder is that he succeeded in freeing himself so completely 
from peculiar Scotch idioms. The chief merit of his narrative, 
apart from its superior accuracy, is perspicuous arrangement : this 
was so much dwelt upon by contemporary critics that we must 
suppose it to have been a very sensil)le improvement on preceding 
Histories. Among other things that have been mentioned as 
coefficient causes of his extraordinary success, besides the correct" 
ness and perspicuity of his style, and the accuracy of his research, 



HISTORY. 485 

are the comprehensiveness of bis views, his singular insight into 
political transactions, and the management of his narrative so as 
to excite the interest of a dramatic plot. 

The first year of the last quarter of the eighteenth century 13 
rather a memorable year in prose literature ; it witnesse 1 the death 
of Hume and the publication of three remarkable works, Smith's 
' Wealth of Nations,' Campbell's ' Philosophy of Rhetoric,' and 
Gibbon's ' Human Empire.' 

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), the son of a wealthy proprietor in 
Surrey and Hani[ishire, was born at Putney. He was an infirm 
child, the only survivor of a family of seven, and being sent to 
school at irregular intervals, was allowed very much to educate 
himself. Having free access to good libraries, he read voraciously, 
particularly in historical works ; and when he went to Oxford at 
the age of fifteen, he possessed "a stock of knowledge that might 
have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school- 
boy would have been ashamed." At Oxford he had resided but 
fourteen months, when meeting in the coiu'se of his multifarious 
reading witli two jiroductions from the pen of Bossuet, he was by 
them converted to the Poman Catholic faith, and consequently 
obliged to quit the University. He would not seem to have lost 
much by this forced separation : "To the University of Oxford," 
be says, " I acknowledge no obligation ; and she will as cheerfully 
renounce me for a son, as 1 am willing to disclaim her for a 
mother." Removed from Oxford, be was placed at Lausanne in 
Switzerland, under the care of a pious clergyman, who persuaded 
him to return to the Protestant communion. At Lausanne he re- 
mained nearly five years. On his return to England in 175S, be 
lived chiefly at his father's bouse in Hampshire ; and, entering no 
profession, continued the miscellaneous studies that had occupied 
him in Switzerland. In 1761 be made his first appearance as an 
author in an essay on * The Study of Literature,' written in French; 
a wiirk tliat made no impression at home, but was very favourably 
received abroad. About the same time be was appointed a ca|)tain 
in the HamiKsbire Militia: be afterwards said that this experience 
was of use to him when he came to write bis history — " The dis- 
cipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave him a clearer 
notion of the phalanx and the legion." Some three years after 
this, in the course of a tour in Italy, he conceived the idea of bis 
famous work: "It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as 
I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed 
friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea 
of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind." 
He did little towards the fulfilment of this conception till 1770, 
when the death of his father left him master of an ample fortuna 



484 FROM 17G0 TO 1700. 

The first volume appeared in 1776, and was received with unpre- 
cedented favour; the tirst eiiition was disjiosed of in a few days. 
He completed the work at Lausanne in 1787, and it was pub- 
lished in 1788, on his fifty-first birtliday. His dtath tooli place in 
the beginning of 1794, about ten months before the birth of Grote, 
the historian of Greece. 

Gibbon is described as having been in his early years of feeble 
constitution and slender frame, with a disproportionately large head. 
In after-life he presented an obese figure, fashionably dressed, 
with a small ninuth, a melliHuous voice, and elegant and digni- 
fied manners. " His honourable and amiable disposition," says 
Brougham, who is far from being a generous critic, " his kind and 
even temper, was praised by all, displayed as it was in the steadi- 
ness- of his friendships, and the generosity of his conduct towards 
Deyverdun, atid indeed all who needed whatever help his circum- 
stances enabled him to give. Perhafis the warmth of his affection 
was yet more strikingly exemjylified in his steady attachment to 
his kind aunt, Miss Porten, and towards his venerable sttpmother." 
The same authnrity ol jects to Mackintosh's ofif-hand opinion that 
Gibbon "might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind, 
without being missed ;" and affirms that Burke's "whole writings, 
excellent as they are for some qualities, will never stand nearly so 
high in the estimation of mankind, either for profound learning or 
for various usefulness, as the 'Decline and Fall.'" As reganis the 
peculiar opinions of this work, its hostility to Christianity has 
been widely reprobated and deplored : the author's insidious way 
of accounting for the spread of Christianity by " secondary causes " 
— that is, by circumstances apart from the inherent power of the 
religion — has always given especial offence. His excuse that he 
might have softened the two obnoxious chapters (the 15th and 
i6th) if he had thought that "the pious, the timid, and the pru- 
dent, would feel, or affect to feel, with auch exquisite sensildlity," 
was more aggravating than apologetic. — Apart altogether from the 
character of his opinions, his style is very remarkable — "copious, 
splendid, elegantly roumled, distinguished by supreme artificial 
skill." That it cannot be recommeuded as a general model, is no 
more than must be said of almost all English authors. In spite of 
its singularities, it must be considered a valuable contribution to 
the wealth of the language. He possessed in the largest measure 
the author's first great requisites — a full command of words, and 
the power of sti iking out fresh combinations. His chief mechanical 
peculiarities are an excessive use of the abstract noun, and an 
unusually abundant employment of descriptive and suggestive 
epithets. This last peculiarity is the main secret of what is often 
described as the "pregnancy" of his style; it forms one of the 
principal arts of condensation, brevity, compression. He conveys 



HISTORY. 485 

inciflentally, by a pnssing adjective, information that Macaulay 
would liave set forth in a special sentence : from its form, the 
expre^;sion seems to take for granted that the reader is already 
acquainted with the facts referred to, but substantially in an 
allusive way it adds to the knowledge of the most uninitiated. 

To this period belongs also the most successful biography in our 
language. It was not jiublished till 1791, but probably everything 
except the printing was executed before the last year of the present 
division. 

Jhines Boswell (1740-1795), the only son of the laird of Auchin- 
leck, in Ayrshire, who was an Edinburgh lawyer, and rose to be 
one of the Lords of Session, was born in Edinburgh, and educated 
for the law. He showe 1 from early manhood less fondness for 
business than for travel and literary company. At the age of 
twenty-three, he set out to make the tour of Eurojie, was intro- 
duced to Johnson as he passed through London, and shaped the 
course of his travels so as to obtain introductions to many of the 
chief Euroiiean celebrities, including \'oltaire and Piousseau. On 
his return, he publishe I in 1768 'An Account of Corsica, with 
Memoirs of General I'aoli ' ; his enthusiasm for tlie Coisicans and 
their general procuiing him the nickname of "Corsica Boswell." 
In 1773 he accompanied Johnson on his famous tour through the 
Hebrides; his journal of this tour he published in 1785, the year 
after Johnson's death. His great work, 'The Life of Johnson,' 
appeared, as we have said, six years later. With all the praise 
that is lavished upon this biography, the author himself is rather 
an underrated man. It is pretty generally supposed that iittle 
intellectual power was requi;ed for such a production — that it is 
merely an affair of memory and observation. Now such jiowers of 
memory and observation are certainly no common endowment; 
but these are far from being the only powers displayed in the 
work. Casual readers are api to undervalue the skill shown in the 
arrangement and the narrative of the fa( ts and the conver.-ations ; 
and i\bicaulay, who dilates u[Jon the meanness of spirit shown in 
the di awing out of Johnson's opinions, gives no credit to the in- 
genuity. L'oswell was undoubtedly a man of much social tact, 
possessing great general knowledge of human nature, and a most 
penetiating insight into the thi ughts and intents of his habitual 
companions. lie i)]ayed upon the prejudices of Johnson, and 
gained his own ends, with consummate adroitness. It is but a 
fair retort to Macaulay, that ^\hoever considers Boswell a "great 
fool," lays himself open, as regards that judgment at least, to a 
similar imputation. His habit of thrusting himself up n cele- 
brated men was not such an immorality as I as sometimes lieen 
represented; it was at least the most amiable and disinterested 



48G FKO.M 17C0 TO 17:0. 

form of tuft-hunting. And it is rnther a lia??ty judgment to set 
down the fact thut lie could live on friendly terms with celebrated 
men of every variety of character and opinions to innate servility 
of disposition ; a better-advised, not to say a more generous judg- 
ment, would accept his own explanation — that he " ever deliglited 
in that intellectual chemistry which can separate good qualities 
from evil in the same person," and that he endured the evil for the 
sake of the good. 

MISCELLANKOUS. 

Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford (1717-1797), the son of Sir 
Roliert Walpole, is one of the most felicitous of our niinnr writers 
of prose. The peculiarities of his easy sauntering dis})osition were 
a great puzzle to Lord Macaulay: that energetic writer pronounced 
him "tlie most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, 
the most capricious of men," ajid said that " his mind was a bundle 
of inconsistent whims and affectations." His inconsistencies are 
not so startling when we bear in mind the character and station 
of the man ; he was too fond of ease, too much averse to effort, to 
take the troulile of being consistent. His enileavour was to gratify 
his various tastes at the minimum of exertion. He had a taste for 
pictures and for articles of antiquarian value, and haunted print- 
shops and auction - rooms ; he frequented clubs and went into 
society, and amuse I himself with retailing the gossip and the bon- 
viots to lady and other correspondents ; he procured introductions 
to eminent and notorious individuals; in political circles he en- 
joyed the mischievous fun of setting people together by the ears. 
He i)ur[iosely refrained from forming opinions, or purposely dis- 
sembled them, that he might be saved the trouble of maintaining 
them. He was ambitious of literary distinction, and wrote books: 
but he pretended that they were valueless, and disclaimed the 
title of author; partly, no doubt, for the j.leasure of so doing, but 
partly also that he might be saved the eti'ort of supjiorting a char- 
acter for learning. He is described as a very tall, slender man, 
with dark, lively, penetrating eyes, and complexion of a most un- 
healthy paleness. His observant faculty and freedom fr^m excite- 
ment gave him a great advantage in witty repartee and impromptu 
turning of compliments. One of his greatest beauties of style is 
his skill in hitting off characteristic traits. His works are rather 
voluminous : writing would seem to have been his favourite em- 
ployment : * Catalogue of lloyal and Noble Authors,' 1758 ; 'Anec- 
dotes of Painting,' 1761-71; 'Catalogue of Engravers,' 1763; 
' Castle of Otranto,' 1764; ' Mysterious .Mother,' 1768; 'Historic 
Doubts on the Life and Reign of Kichard HI.,' 1768. Several 
volumes of his Letters have also been published. 



MISCELLANEOUS "WRITERS. 487 

'Junius.' — The first of the celebrated Letters of Junius appeared 
on the 2ist of January 1769, in the ' Public Advertiser,' one of the 
leading newsiapers of the time. The same writer had been, under 
various signatures, an active correspondent for at least two years 
before, and is supposed to havie written some of the shorter letters 
that appeared in explanation and reinforcement of ihe views of 
Junius. The letters under the signatures of "Junius " and " Philo- 
Junius " had a certain unity of theme, were more studied in com- 
position, and, from a combination of circumstances, made by far 
the greatest sen.sation in the political world. At the time when 
they apjieared, there was an almost unparalleled disorganisation 
among the rulers of the country :^an obstinate king bent upon 
asserting and extending his prerogative ; Parliament distracted by 
opposite policies, and still more by personal enmities ; ditticulties 
with more than one Euroi)ean power; a growing tjuarrel with our 
American colonies ; and at home an imbitlered struggle for the 
freedom of the press. Junius attacked the conduct and character 
of the leading politicians with unprecedented freedom. The mere 
splendour of his language and the energy of his sarcasm would 
have made him a rejjutation ; but what chieliy attracted interest 
and raised consternation was the knnwledge that he showed of 
State secrets and of the private life of his victims. The excite- 
ment grew when the name of this apparent traitor to his order 
baffled the most determined inquiries. 

The authorship of Junius was never acknowledged, either 
publicly or privately. There are several traditions of great per- 
sons who professed to know all about it ; but none of them are 
said to have committed themselves to an express declaration. 
In 1804, the Marquess of Lan>downe asserted that "he knew 
Junius, and knew all about the writing and production of those 
letters;" that Junius had never been j)ublicly named ; and that 
he ] imposed one day to write a pamjjhlet and disclose the secret: 
but he died and gave no sign. The evidence for the authorship is 
thus wholly circumstantiaL 

In the day and generation of Junius himself, nearly every man 
of distinction was named by one person or another as the "Great 
Unknown." The preliminary essay to the 1812 edition of Junius 
— issued by the son of Woodfall, the publisher of the ' Public Ad- 
vertiser,' and containing Junius's private letteis to Woodfall, along 
with fac-similes of his handwriting — discusses the pretensions of 
some twelve or more individuals. Since 1812 many volumes have 
been written, solving the mystery with equal confidence in favour 
of different claimants. Colonel Barr6, Lauchlin Macleane, Thomas 
Lord Lyttleton, Lord Temple (with Lady Temple as amanuensis), 
are among the authors more recently put forward at considerable 
lenjrth. 



488 FROM 17C0 TO 1790. 

The pretensions of Sir Philip Francis have been countersigned 
by an overwhehuing number of authorities. His name was never 
mentioned in connection with the celebrated Letters until 1814; 
in 1816, Mr John Taylor, in his "Junius Identified with a cele- 
brated Living Character," produced a body of evidence that has 
since been very generally accepted as conclusive. Brougham, 
Lord Campbell, De Quincey, Macaulay, Earl Stanhope, and many 
others have declared themselves satisfied. De Quincey is jierhaps 
the most decided. Lord Brougham, he says, does not " state the 
result with the boldness which the premises warrant. Chief- 
Justice Dallas, of the Common Pleas, was wont to say that a 
man arraigned as Junius upon the evidence here accumulated 
against Sir Philip Francis, must have been convicted in any court 
of luirope. But I would go much farther ; I would say that there 
are single proofs, which (tukeii separately and apart from all the 
rest) are sufficient to sustain the whole onus of the charge." 

The arguments in favour of the title of Francois are such as the 
following: "Junius" shows an acquaintance with the forms of 
the Secretary of State's Office, and with the business of the War 
Office; Francis began life as a clerk in the Secretary of State's 
Office, and was a clerk in the War Office at the time of the ap- 
pearance of the Letters. "Junius" shows a minute acquaintance 
with the private life of statesmen and with secret political man- 
oeuvres ; Francis had means of access to such knowledge through 
his father, as well as through other channels. Francis thus pos- 
sesses the preliminary requisites for a claimant to the honour or 
dishonour of the authorship. It was possible for him, from his 
situation in life, to obtain the very special and stanling know- 
ledge displayed by "Junius." Farther, it is conten 'ed that the 
character of Francis was consistent with the characteristic temper 
of "Junius." Francis was an ambitious man, of proud, imperious 
disposition, with a certain generosity of public spirit, but of in- 
tense personal animosity, and very exacting in his ideal of himian 
virtue, especially as regarded his superiors in [)ublic station ;^a 
young man iu a humble office jealously measuring himself with 
higher officials, and savage because he had to drudge for men that 
he considered inferior to himself. Again, it is contended tliat 
Francis possessed the requisite ability. "Junius" was evidently 
a cultivated and practised writer ; and Francis was in a peculiar 
manner bred to the pen by his father, and seems to have begun at 
an early age to send letters to the newspapers on passing events. 
In addition to these considerations, which do no more than show 
that Francis was capable of writing "Junius," and had a motive 
in his own jealous amldtious temper, there are various alleged 
coincidences that bring the charge more nearly home. " The 
tendency of all the external argiunents," says De Quincey, " drawn 



MISCELLAXEOCS WKITEKS. 4 80 

from circumstantial or personal considerations, from local facts, or 
the records of party, flows in the very same cliannel ; with all the 
internal presuniiitions derived from the style, from the anomalous 
use of words, from the anomalous construction of the syntax, from 
the peculiar choice of images, from the arbitrary use of the tech- 
nical shorthand for correcting typographical errors, from c.ipricious 
punctuation, and even from penmanship (which, of itself, taken 
separately, has sometimes determined the weightiest legal inter- 
ests). Proofs, in fact, rush upon us more plentiful than black- 
berries ; and the case ultimately becomes fatiguing, from the very 
plethora and riotous excess of evidence. It would stimulate at- 
tention more, and pique the interest of curiosity more pungently, 
if there were some conflicting evidence, some shadow of ])resump- 
tions against Francis. But there are none, absolutely none." 

One of the chief arguments against the title of Francis is that 
he was an exceedingly vain man, and yet expressly denied the 
authorship. In reply to this argument De Quiucey is particu- 
larly ingenious. He points out, in the first place, that the denial 
is ambiguous — " most jesuitically ada[)ted to convey an impres- 
sion at variance with the strict construction which lurks in the 
literal wording." Secondly, he urges that Francis was debarred 
from making the avowal by fear and shame. He had obtained 
his information by treachery, and he liad directed his ill-nature 
against some of his principal benefactors. To disclose the secret 
would have been to declare himself a detestable villain. And this 
consideration is one of the strongest corroborative proofs of the 
identity of Junius with Francis ; for Avho else had the same 
motive to perpetual secrecy 1 " Upon such an account only is 
it possible to explain the case. All other accounts leave it a 
per[>etual mystery, unfathomable upon any principles of human 
nature, why Junius did not, at least, make his claim by means of 
some last will and testament." 

The principal opponent of the "Franciscan" theory of Junius, 
as it is called, is Mr Hay ward. Those who wish to see all that 
can be pleaded against the verdict of the majority should consult 
his " More about Junius," reprinted from ' Fraser's i\Iagazine,' 
Vol. LXXVI. The Franciscans have recently received strong 
su[iport from the 'Professional Investigation of the Handwriting 
of Junius,' by Mr Charles Chabot, Expert. Mr Clial)ot is of 
opinion that the handwriting of Junius is the handwriting of 
Francis disguised. 

Dr Francis, the father of Sir Philip, was an Irish clergyman, 
who settled in London as author and teacher about the middle of 
the century. He is known as the translator of Horace, Demos- 
thenes, and ^schines. He was an active party - writer, was 
intimate with Lord Holland and other statesmen, and was always 



490 FROM nnO TO 17'K). 

well stored with political gossip. Philip, born in Dublin in 1740, 
was V)rought l>y his father to London, and received liis pnnci|iai 
schooling at St Paul's, where he was the master's most admired 
pnpil. In 1756 he obtained, through his father's patron, Lord 
Holland, a junior clerkshii) in the Secretary of State's Oflice, and 
remained there, with certain brief interruptions, until 1762, when 
he was appointed first clerk in the War Office. He hell his clerk- 
ship in the War Office for ten years, during which he is supposed 
to have written the "Candor" letters, "Junius," and many letters 
under other signatures. He resigned the clerkship in 1772, for 
reasons that are somewhat obscure. The Franciscans hi)Id that 
the motive was resentment at the ajipointment of Chamier as 
Deputy-Secretary, and connect this with the attacks of Junius 
upon that individual. In 1773 ^^ obtained an extraordinary 
preferment, which the Franciscans sup])ose to be souiehi)W con- 
nected with his authorship of Junius. He was made a member of 
the Supreme Council in Bengal, with a salary of ;,^io,ooo a-year. 
In India he persistently opjiosed Warren Hastings, and was 
wounded by him in a duel. Returning to England in 1780, he 
entered Parliament, and became an active supporter of the Whigs. 
He die 1 in 1818. 

The leading feature in the mechanical part of the style of 
"Junius" is the predominance of the balanced structure — "the 
poised and graceful structure of the sentences;" and the leading 
"quality" of the style is sarcasm, sometimes elaborately polished, 
sometimes inclining to coarse, unvarnished abuse. The imagery is 
also much admired, and the exi)ression is often felicitous, though 
far from being of the first order of originality. 

John Home Tooke (1736-1812) is be>t known in literature by 
a phik)logical work, 'The Diversions of Purley ' (pub. 1786); but 
his general fame rests more ujion his politicid activity. Made a 
cleriiyman against his will by his father, a wealthy London poul- 
terer, he nevertheless engaged actively in j)olitics on the P»adical 
side; and finding himself trammelled by the clerical character, he 
resigned his living in 1773, and studied law. He twice sufi'ered 
for his "advanced" opinions. He was fined and imprisoned in 
1777 for accusing the king's troops of having "murdered" the 
American insurgents at Lexington ; and in 1794 he was tried for 
high treason, mainly on account of his connection with the Con- 
stitutional Society during the excitement of the French Revolu- 
tion. Yet, upon the whole, he prospered. Having rendered some 
service to Mr Tooke of Purley, he was made that gentleman's heir, 
and assumed his name ; and he spent his latter years in literary 
leisure and genial society at Wimbledon. During his active life 
he made several unsuccessful attempts to gain a seat in Parlia- 
ment, and at last entered as representative of the rotten borough 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 491 

of Old Sarum in 1801. In 1S02 lie was excluded from the House ; 
his exclusion being a most startling exemplilicatiun of two prin- 
ciples — one til at no priest can lay aside his orders and become a 
layman/ and the other (enacted in 1802 for the express purpose of 
ousting Tooke) that no one in priest's orders can sit in the House 
of Commons. His etymological 'Diversions' arose out of his 
political career. He began to theorise in prison upon the con- 
struction by the judges of certain jiropositions in a case quoted 
against him on his trial in 1777. This perhaps accounts for his 
proceeding upon what is ju.stly described as the "monstrous" 
principle that " the etymological history of words is our true guide, 
both as to the present import of the words themselves, and as to 
the nature of those things which they are intended to signify." 
Apart from this, he is very ingenious in his attempts to trace how 
the language of mind lias been borrowed from the language of 
external things, and how conjunctions and other syntactic particles 
of speech have been derived from significant nouns and verbs. 
But the main interest of the 'Diversions' to the general reader 
lies in the witty intermixture of political thiusts and declamations. 

No other prose writers within this period have any special in- 
terest. The writings of the eccentric James Burnet, Lord Mon- 
boddo (1714-1799), contain interesting passages, such as his theory 
about the origin of man, and his humorously extravagant defence 
of the superiority of ancient over modern writers ; but the interest 
is more in the matter than in any felicity or original force of 
expressiou. 

1 Eejpealed in 187* 



CHAPTER IX. 



FROM 1790 TO 182a 



"WILLIAM PALEY, 

1743—1805. 

The middle thirty years of Pa'ey's life coincided very nearly with 
the preceding period; but as mcst of'liis works ^ were published 
in the beginning of this period, we take him as belonging to it. 

His life was easy and prosperous, without any striking turns 
either of hardship or of good fortune. He was boin at Peter- 
borough, his father being a minor canon in the Cathedral. Hia 
father was afterwards appointed head-master of the grammar- 
school of Giggleswick in Yorkshire, and the family removed there. 
Though not very precocious as a boy, he gave such proofs of 
shrewdness and intellectual force as to raise high expectations of his 
future eminence. At the age of fifteen he was entered as a sizar at 
Christ's College, Cambridge. It is said on his own authority that 
he was at first an idle student, and loved company better than his 
books, and that he ma le a remorseful resolution to read hard when 
one of his idle companions reproved him for wasting his talents. 
He probably exaggeiated the efi'ect of this reprimand ; but how- 
ever that may be, he did become a hard student, and eventually 
came out senior wrangler. He taught Latin for three years in an 
academy at Greenwich. In 1766 he was elected to a fellowship in 
liis college, and appointed a lecturer. One of Ids college friends 
was a son of Bishop Law, and through the bishop's influence he 

1 Tlie list is: 'Moral and Political Philosophj',' 1785; 'Horse I'aulinae, or 
Tlie Truth of tlie Scripture History of St Paul evinced,' 1790; 'A View of the 
Evidences of Christianity,' 1794; 'Natural Theology,' 1802. There are published 
ahio several of his Sermous. 



"WILLIAM PALEY. 493 

was preferred fmm one benefice to anotlier in the see of Carlisle. 
His 'Moral Philosophy' -nas based upon the lectures he delivered 
in his college. Upon the publication of his 'Evidences of Chris- 
tianity' in 1794, he was rewarded by three several bishops with 
preferments amounting in all to considerably more than _^2ooo. 
From some unknown '.-ause or causes, he never obtained a bishopric. 
In the course of his leisure he found time to write the works we 
have mentioned. He died at Bishop Wearmouth on the 25tli of 
May 1805. 

In person Paley was above the middle height, of a stout make, 
inclining in his later years to cor[iulence. A good, easy man, he 
was rather careless about his attire, and his homely manners and 
provincial accent are said to have stood in the way of his elevation 
to the bench. 

His intellect was clear and steady. He is a sliining example of 
the form of practical good sense characteristic of ]''nglishnien. He 
did not hunt after paradoxes and subtleties, nor did he throw him- 
self with eagerness into original investigations. He liked to walk 
on sure ground, and made abundant use of the la'iours of others. 
Good sense is the distinguishing quality of his ' Moral and Political 
Philosophy.' In the case of such a question as the exis ence of a 
moral sense, he enters into no subtle disquisition, but puts the 
thing at once to a rough and simple test ; and such theories as 
that of "natural right" he at once sets aside as groundless. In 
his ' Evidences of Christianity,' which has long been the text- 
book on the subject, he does little more than popularise the con- 
densed Putler and the voluminous Lardner. The 'Horae Paulinae' 
and the ' Natural Theology ' are the product of no more subtle 
qualities of mind than patient industry and shrewdness. 

He was sober and temperate in his feelings, a most unromantic 
and unpoetic man. At school and at the university he was much 
sought after as a boon companion ; his good-humour and drollery, 
set off by his rather cumbrous and slovenly exterior, making him 
a great favourite. Throughout life he retaine 1 his social neigh- 
bourly ways, keeping up acquaintance with his parishioners in 
homely, unostentatious interccuirse. His writings ci^ntain little or 
nothing to satisfy the emotions ; occasionally we cross a pleasant 
vein of irony or sarcasm, and we aie constantly entertained with 
homely facts, but high-flown sentiment is totally wanting.^ 

J DiscourKing on Human Happiness in his Philosophy he openly disclaims 
refineil sentiment; "I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and 
capacity of our nature; tJie superiority of tlie soul to the body, of the rational 
to the animal jiart of our constitution ; ujion the worthiness, refinement, and 
deli'-acy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossuess, and sensuality of 
others ; becaubC 1 hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and 
intensity." 



494 FROM 1791) TO 1820. 

His easy compliant temper, and shrewd steady intellect, were 
the ruling princi[)les of his conduct. True, he was ambitious of 
literary distinction, but he pursued his ambition by safe and easy 
paths. He was eminently " loyal to facts " ; he recognised their 
supremacy without a struggle. At college he jjroposcd to defend 
the thesis that eternity of punishment is contrary to the divine 
attributes; but wlien his tutor expressed disapproval, he simj)ly 
p'accd a '^not" before "contrary," and reversed his arguments. 
Later in life, when charged with some inconsistency, he made the 
humorous remark that "he could not afford to keep a conscience." 
As clergyman and autlior, he got througii his work by steady regu- 
larity. Everything had its allotted time, and in his untroubled 
existence there were few interruptions to his settled plans. 

Opinions. — It is probably owing to the prestige of Paley's doc- 
trines that Utilitarianism is so often and so obstinately identified 
with selfishness. To class Paley with the Utilitarians of the pres- 
ent day is misleading. He agrees with them fully in one }>oint, 
and in one point only — namely, in repudiating lunate moral dis- 
tinctiims. On a very fundamental point he is utterly at variance 
with them ; he aUows no merit to disinterested action, as stich. 
In Paley's view, they only are praiseworthy that act from a regard 
to their own everlasting happiness. In matters of religion, what- 
ever may have been Paley's private 0])inions, he published nothing 
inconsistent with the Thirty-Nine Articles. In one solitary point 
he showed a tendency to be latitudinarian ; he wrote, in defence of 
his patron Bishop Law, a pamphlet against the propriety of requir- 
ing Subscription to Articles of Faith. 

He was eminently free from bigotry, and wrote in favour of the 
most enlightened tolerance, with an exception against works of 
" ridicule, invective, and mockery." " Every si)ecies of intoler- 
ance which enjoins suppression and silence, and every species of 
persecution which enforces such injunctions, is adverse to the pro- 
gress of truth." In the matter of Church government he held that 
" if the dissenters from the establishment become a majority of the 
peoi)le, the establishment itself ought to be altered or qualified." 

He had the humanity to write strongly against the slave trade, 
and to refute every shred of argument that could be urged in its 
favour. 



ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocabulary. — Although Paley's language is not studiously varied, 
he never seems to be in want of words, and the combinations are 
often agreeably fresh. His preference is for homely words ; but he 
does not scruple to use the most technical terms, and now and then 



WILLIAM PALET. 495 

even quotes Latin, trustinii to make himself intelligible to the 
ordinary capacity by the power of his homely illustrations. 

Sentences and /'orcu/raphs. — -The chief thing worth noticing about 
Paley's sentences is that they are not constructed upon a few favour- 
ite forms, or with any leaning to a favourite rhythm. His is not a 
"formed" style; he is studious to express himself in simple lan- 
guage, without regard to measure or fluent melody. 

It might be expected that, having no misleading desire for 
euphcmious comliinations, he would adopt the best arrangement 
for emphiisis. But it is not so ; he had not much natural turn for 
point, and does not seem to have been aware of the advantage of 
calling special attention to a word by its position. 

The construction of his paragraphs is worth examining minutely, 
(i.) The first thing that strikes us in turning over his pages wiih 
an eye to the paiagraph division is the unusual number of para- 
graphs. Every statement that he wishes to make prominent, he 
places in a paragraph by itself. Thus— 

" It will be our business to slion*. if wo can, 

" I. What Human Happiness does not eousi-t iu : 

" II. What it does consist in. 

"First, theu, Happiness does uot consist," &c. 

Again — 

"The above account of human happiness will justify the two following 
conclusions, which, although found in most boolcs of morality, have seldom, 
I think, been supported by any sullicient reasons : — 

" First, That happiness is pretty equally distributed amongst the differ- 
ent orders of civil society : 

"Secondly, That vice has no advantage over virtue, even with respect 
to this world's happiness." 

Once more — 

" Tlie four Cardinal virtues are, prudence, fortUude, temperance, and 
justice. 

" But the division of virtue, to which we are in modern times most accus- 
tomed, is into duties: — 

" Towards God ; as piety, reverence, resignation, gratitude, &c. 

"Towards ot/ier men (or relative duties); as justice, charity, fidelity, 
loyalty, &c. 

"Towards ourselves; as chastity, sobriety, temperance, preservation of 
life, care of health, &c." 

The above short extracts show his arts of giving prominence to 
leading statements and leading words. He uses se[iarate para- 
graphs; he makes divisions conspicuous sometimes by figures — • 
I., II., &c., sometimes by numbers printed in small cajjitals — 
First, Secondly, kc; he empliasises leading words by printing 
them in small capitals or in italics. The first chapter of the book 
on ' Moral Obligations ' upon the question, Why am I obliged to 



496 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

keep my wordl is a very happy example of his perspicuous method 
His chief defect in tliis respect is in the arts of indicating de.L,'ree9 
of subordination. lie has nothing but the dill'erence between capi- 
tals and italics, and the difference between Roman numbers (I., IL, 
<kc.) and Arabic (i, 2, itc.) Owing to this defect, the multiplicity 
of small paragrai)h3 is not a little confusing when we attempt to 
take in a chapter at a comprehensive glance. It would be a great 
advantage if the most important statements were printed in larger 
tyi)e. 

(2.) The next thing that strikes us is the fulness of his plirases 
of reference, and the consequent ease of following his exposition. 
We are constantly kept to tiie i)oint by such ])hrases as — " We will 
explain ourselves by an example or two;" "This will serve for one 
instance ; another is the following ; " " For this is the alternative. 
Either . . . or . . . ; " and so forth. 

(3.) When we take special paragraphs in detail, we find that the 
exposition is not so perspicuous as we should expect from the per- 
spicuity of the larger divisions. On examination we find the rea- 
son to be that he does not always keep the main sulyect prominent, 
but in his easy way changes the point of view. In the following 
passage, though the separate statements are simple, they cannot 
be put together coherently without an effort : — 

" The art in which tlie secret of human hai>piness consists, is to set the 
habits in such a manner that every change may be a change t'i)r tlie b-'tter. 
The liabits themselves are nuich the same ; ibr whatever is made habitual, 
becomes smooth and easy, and nearly indilleient. Tne return to an old 
habit is likewise easy, whatever the habit be. Therefore the advantage is 
■with those habits which allow of au indulgence in the deviatiou from ihem." 

Here the remark about the return to an old habit is not so put as 
to show its relevance. It were better omitted at that particular 
stage. Perhaps the following would be a simpler statement : — 

" The great art of human happiness is to set the habits in such a manner 

that every change may be a change for the better. In a habit itself there 
is little either of pleasure or of pain ; whatever is made iial)itual becomes 
BiUHoth, easy, and nearly indilferent. The pleasure or pain lies in the de- 
jiarture from a liabit. This being so, our wisdom is to form such hahits as 
may be changed for the better, aud are not likely to be cliauged lor the 
worse. " 

To be sure, the difference between the two modes of statement is 
slight; still in exposition every little lielps, and changes that seem 
trifiing in a short passage, may, if carried through a chapter, make 
a very substantial difference to the case of the reader. It is only 
by slight changes that Paley's method can be imi)roved upon ; and 
the student of popular exposition would do well to attend to such 
improvementsi. 



WILLIAM PALEY. 497 



QUALITIES OF STYLE. 



Simplicity and Perspicuity are the eminent qunlities of Paley's 
style. We have already said that the diction, though occasionally 
Latinised and technical, is upon the whole familiar, and that the 
structure, with certain posf^ibilities of improvement, is upon the 
whole perspicuous and easy to follow. But the simple diction and 
perspicuous structure are by no means the only elements of his 
popular style. 

(i.) It is somewhat of a paradox to say concerning a writer on 
Moral and Political Philosophy, Christian Evidences, and Natu- 
ral Theology, that his subject-matter is not abstruse. Of course, 
Paley's subjtct-matter is abstruse compared with the subject-matter 
of mere narrative, or of essays on the minor morals. But it is not 
so abstruse as it might be, considering the i)rofessed themes. He 
is careful not to take up any doctrine that is too deep or too subtle 
for popular exposition. He knows either by instinct or by definite 
purpose where to stop. He makes no pretence of going to the very 
root of a matter. In discussiuii moral obligation he does not enter 
upon the Freedom of the Will. In his 'Natural Theology' he 
does not enter upon external perception. In considering cases of 
conscience, he restricts himself to "the situations which arise in 
the life of an inhabitant of this country in these times." " 1 have," 
he says, " examined no doubts, I have discussed no obscurities, I 
have encountered no errors, I have adverted to no controversies, 
but what I have seen actually to exist." In saying all this, we 
must not forget that such subjects as Paley does think fit to dis- 
cuss might be treated in a very abstruse manner. Only it is neces- 
sary to remember that the popular character of his exposition 
depends to some extent upon the choice of subject-matter. 

(2.) He has a habit of stating principles in their application to 
a concrete case, and he chooses very homely illustrations. These 
are undoubtedly the main secrets of the simplicity of his style. 

A good example of his sim[)le way of stating disputed principles 
by bringing them to bear on a supposed case, is seen in his chapter 
on the "moral sense." He begins the chapter by relating the 
story of Caius Toianius, who in the proscription by the trium- 
virate was betrayed to the executioners by his own son. He 
then proceeds : — 

" Now the question is, whether, if this story were related to the wild boy 
caught some years ago in the woods ot Hanover, or to a sava<,fe witlmut ex- 
perii-nce, and without; instruction, cut otf in his infancy from all imerconise 
with his species, and, coiisei|nent]y, under no [lO^sihle influence nf examide, 
authority, education, sympathy, or habit ; whether, I say, sucii a one wonlil 
feel, upon tlie re atimi, any dejrree, of Utal sentiiacibl of diaajjjirubullun 0/ 
Toranius's conduct which we feel, or not ? ; 

2 I 



498 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

"Tlicy who maintain tlic existence of a moral sense; of innate maxims; 
of a iiaiuial conscience ; tlmt tlie love of virtue and hatred of vice are 
instinctive ; or the |ierccjition of right and wrong intuitive ; (all which 
are only Jillereut ways of expressing the sajne opinion,) affirm that ho 
would. 

" They who deny the existence of a moral sense, &c., affirm that he would 
not. 

" And upon this, issue is joined. 

"As the experiment has never heen made, and, from the difficulty of 
procuring a subject (not to incntion the inipossiliility of proposing the 
question to him, if we luid one), is never likely to be made, what would 
be tiie event, cau only bo judged ol from probable reasons." 

He tlien proceeds to state the pms and cons. 

No better instance could be had of tlie simjilicity of his ex- 
amples and comparisons than the well-known jiigeon illustration. 
It constitutes tlie first chapter of the book on ' llelative Duties,' 
and is headed On Property : — 

" If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn ; and if (instead of 
each picking where and whiit it likeil, taking just as much as it wanted, and 
no more) you shoulti see ninety-nine of them gathering all tliey got into a 
hcaj) ; reserving nutiiing for themselves but the chart' and the refuse ; keep- 
ing this he;ip for one, and th:it the weakest, perhaps worst, })igeon ol the 
flock ; sitting round and looking on, all the winter, whilst tliis one was 
<iev(iuring, throwing about, anil wasting it: ;ind if a pigeon more hardy or 
hungry tlian the rest, loucbed a grain of the hoatd, all tiie others instantly 
fljing upon it, and tearing it to pieces ; if you should see this, you would 
see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among 
men. Ammig men, y<m see the ninety -and -nine, toiling and scraiiing 
together a heaj) of superfluities for one (and this one, too, ottpntimes the 
feebb-st and worst of the whole set, a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool), 
getting notliing (or themselves all the while but a little of the i:oarsest of 
the jirovision which their own industry produces ; looking quietly on, while 
they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled ; and if one of the 
number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him, 
and hanging him for the theft "^ 

Clearness. — Perspicuity is possessed by Paley in a very high 
degree, but the jyrecision of his statements and definitions is a 
good deal affected by his paramount desire to be popular. Too 
clear-headed to run into confusion, he is at the same time anxious 
to accoinnindate himself to the plainest intelligence, and, like 
many simple writers, juirchases simplicity at the expense of 
exactness. His purpose is to be easily understood by the mass, 
and be deliberately and avowedly prefers a division or definition 
because it is common and popular. His classification of the 
virtues is an example (seep. 495). His consideration of "what 

^ An account of Paley can hardly be considered complete without this illus- 
tration. It has a historic interest. It is said that when Paley 's name was sug- 
gest- d to Georae III as one that might deserve a bishopric, the King cried — 
" Paley .' — hae ! hae ! ;</</''"« Paley ! " whereby our author s hopes of such pro- 
motion were ruined for e\ er. 



WILLIAM TALLY. 499 

we mean to say token a man is obliged to do a thivq" is a 
favourable specimen of his popular way of detiniiiy, and of iiis 
care to be as exact as is consistent wilh pojmlar usage : — 

" A man is said to be ohliqe.d ' ivhcn he is urged by a violent inolive result- 
ing from the command of an ol her.' 

"First, 'The motive unist be violent.' If a person who has <ioiie me 
some little service, or has a small jilace in his disposal, ask me upon some 
occasion for my vote, I may possilily give it him, tiuni a motive ot ;;iatitU(le 
or expectation : but I shimhl haidiy say that 1 was ohlUicd to give it him ; 
because the induceineni does not rise iiigli enough. Wheicas, if a lather or 
a master, any great benel'actor, (jf one on whom my fortune (le])end'^, require 
my vote, I give it him of course, and my answer to all who ask me wliy I 
voted so and so is, that my father or my master obliged me ; that I had re- 
ceived so many favours from, or had so great a dependence ujion, such a one, 
that I was obliged to vote as he directed me. 

"Skcoxdi-y, 'It must result from the command of another.' Offer a 
man a gratuity for doing anything — for seizing, for example, an dffemler — 
he is not obliged by your offer to do it ; nor would he say he is ; tliougli he 
may be induced, perauadcd, prevailed upon, templed. If a mauistrate ur the 
man's immediate sujierior command it, he considers himself as obliged to 
comply, though probably he would lose less by a refusal in this case than in 
the former. 

" I will not undertake to say that the words obligation and obliged are 
used unifiirndy in this sense, or always witli this distiin tion : nor is it jios- 
sible to tie down pojmlar jihrases to any constant si^jnitii ation ; but wlier- 
ever the motive is violent enough, and coujiled with the idia "f ((immand, 
authority, law, or tlie will of a superior, there, I take it, we always reckon 
ourselves to be obliged. 

"And from this account of obligation, it follows, that we can be obliged 
to nothing, but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by : for 
nothing else can be a 'violent motive' to us. As we should not be obliged 
to obey the laws or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments, pleasure 
or pain, somehow or other depended upon our obedience; so neither should 
we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise 
virtue, or to obey the commands of God." 

Strength, (L'c. — The preceding extracts give a fair idea of the 
amount of force in Paley's composition; he never soars or de- 
claims. No other quality of his style need be specially noticed. 
We have already remarked his indifl'erence to melody in the 
structure of his sentences. Unless in the vulgarity of his illus- 
trations, he cannot be said to offend against good taste ; he is a 
homely expositor who never even in an illustration makes any 
pretence to touch the finer sensibilities, and never being iu the 
region of art, cannot be caught trespassing. 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Description. — Paley's anatomical descriptions in his * Natural 
Theohigy ' have been much admired. There is novvhere, perha])3, 
a better field for the display of persj^icuous descriptive power 
than in describing the complicated mechanism of the human 



500 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

body. Tt is, liowever, hai'dly fair to compare Paley with system- 
atic writers on atiatoiny, and to praise the lucidity of his descri|> 
tions at their expense. He has an advantage over them in taking 
up the contriviinci'S of the human mechanism only in so far as 
they subserve certain ends, conhning himself to their obvious 
points of suitability to those ends, and not entering into puzzling 
intricacies of detail. On the other hand, it is but justice to his 
extnordinary powers of perspicuous arrangement to say that sys- 
tematic writers might often take a lesson from him. 

He seems to have been aware of the great art of preventing 
confusion in complicated descriptions — the art of keeping the 
leading features prominently before the reader. This he was 
enabled to effect more easily in many cases by the intention of 
his work. He wished to show how exquisitely various parts are 
adapted to particular ends, and thus had ready to his hand an 
easy principle of lucid arrangement. He treats the body simply 
as a piece of machinery, or rather as an assemblage of machines, 
and describes each part only in so far as it ])erforms some par- 
ticular function. Take, for example, his description of the spine 
or backbone. He does not attempt to deal with all its compli- 
cations at once; he separates its contrivances into three groups 
according to the purposes that they serve, according as they 
contribute to stability or firmness, to flexibility, or to the safe 
conveyance of the spinal marrow. 

His mastery of familiar figures was of signal service to him in 
his endeavours to put the reader at starting in possession of a 
comprehensive idea of the subject of his description. To illus- 
trate this we shall quote the beginning of his account of the 
circulation of the blood. The quotation also illustrates what 
may be laid down as a principle in the descripticm of mechanical 
contrivances — namely, that we should begin by stating the pur- 
pose, as giving the most comprehensive idea of the mechanism : — 

"The utility of the circulation of the blood, I assume as an acknowleilged 
point. One grand purjiose is plainly answered by it ; the distrihutinj^ 
to every jmrt, every extremity, evi-ry nook and corner of the body, the 
nouiislnncnt which is received into it by one aperture. Wliat enters at the 
mouth linds its way to the fmLjcis' ends. A more difficult nieclianical pro- 
blem ci'uld hardly, I tliink, be proposid, tlian to discover a niellmd of con- 
stantly repairing the waste, and ol supplying an accession of substance to 
every part of a complicated machine at the same time. 

" Tliis system |iresents itself under two views : first, the disposition of the 
blood-vesstds, i.e., the laying of the ])ipes; and, secondly, the construction 
of the engine at the centre — viz., the heart, for driving the blood through 
them." 

Exposition. — All Paley's works became popular standards, and 
his 'Evidences' and 'Natural Theology' have not yet been super- 
seded. No writer has surpassed him in popularising the subjects 



WILLIAM PALEY. 501 

that he treated of. He may not rank high as an original thinker; 
but as a popular expositor he may still be said to be " the first of 
the first rank." The fact that he is far from perfect even in that 
capacity, should be an inducement for authors of kindred genius 
to surpass him, or at least to bring similar subjects up to the level 
of more recent thought. 

We have seen that his great art of exposition is the production 
of homely examples and comparisnns. This appears in every 
extract that we have considered, and needs not be farther enlarged 
upon. It needs only be remarked, that trusting to this way of 
making himself intelligible, he is not always so careful as he 
might be in his general statements. 

He does not often repeat a statement, either directly or ob- 
versely. His ideal seems to be to give a single statement, and 
then follow up with one or more illustrations, as the case may 
require. 

Of course, his power of homely illustration would not have in- 
sured his popularity as the expounder of a technical subject had 
he not been so orderly and methodical, and had he not avoided 
the most abstruse inquiries. 

Over and above all this, he must also have possessed some means 
of imparting popular interest. Putting aside the intrinsic interest 
of the subjects, which must always be supposed in a popular work, 
we can see little in Paley's manner of exposition to attract interest 
except its simplicity, and its contrast in that respect to other works 
on the same subjects. When we wish to know something of a 
subject, and can find nothing but dry, abstruse expositions, it is 
a great pleasure to meet with an instructor that sympathises with 
our difficulties, and is studiously careful to make the path of 
knowledge easy. Such an instructor is Paley. Take, for ex- 
ample, his most technical work, the ' Moral and Political Phil- 
osophy.' Instead of scaring us in the Preface with a parade of 
the difficulties of the subject, and apologies for his temerity in un- 
dertaking such a task, he understates the difficulties, and takes the 
task upon him with easy confidence. We are told that the design 
of the work is to "direct private consciences in the general conduct 
of human life," " to instruct individuals in their duty." There is 
not a hint of any perplexity about what " conscience " is, or what 
"duty" is. The discussion of the difficult points, such as the 
Moral Sense, is managed with such consummate simplicity, that 
we read the work through as a shrewd body of good advice, and 
wonder how there could be so much hot controversy about questions 
so jilain. Our conductor never indicates, by any faltering in his 
tone, that he is in any difficulty. When he starts a subject on 
which moralists have shown a perplexing diiference of opinion, he 
confidently assures us that the differences are more in name than 



502 FROM 17'J() TO 1820. 

in reality. It is rofrcsliing to turn to the Look on ' !MoraI Obli- 
gations,' and find the first chapter— wliich is headed, "The Ques- 
tion, ir/ty am I uhiijied to keep viy tmrd, considered " — effect such 
au easy reconciliation of conflicting views : — 

"Wliy am I olilif^cd to keep my word ? 

" I'jecause it is riiilit, says one. — Because it is agreeable to the fitness of 
tilings, says aiKitlur. — Hecause it is conformable to reason and nature, says 
a tliird. — IVcause it is contoi'niable to trutli, says a I'ourtli. — Because it 
I'roinotes tlie jiublic good, says a lil'tii. — Because it is required by the will 
of God, concludes a sixth. 

" Upon wliicli dill'erent accounts, two tilings are observable : — 

" Fii;sr, that tlicy all ultimately coincide. 

"The fitness of things, means their fitness to produce happiness: the 
nature of things, means that actual constitutitm of the world, by which 
some tilings, as such and such actions, for exainjile, jiroduco liapjiiness, 
and others misery ; reason is tlie juinciple by wliirh we discover or judge 
of tliis constitution: truth is this judgment, expressed or drawn out into 
propositions." 

Persuasion. — As might be inferred from what we have said, 
Paley is much more successful in convincing the reason than in 
captivating the fancy or touching the feelings. As a preacher he 
is "moderate" and "rationalistic," insisting much upon the pru- 
dence of living in accordance with the Christian faith. He excels 
more as a controversial writer. His fairness and clear good sense 
always produce a favourable inij)re.ssion ; and in his steady way of 
going to work, he gives a succinct presentation of an ojipunent's 
arguments before ])roceeding to state his case in reply. The 
' Evidences ' are generally allowed to be nearly exhaustive fr')m 
their particular point of view, and in the 'Natural Theology' he 
makes the most of his knowledge. 

He shines especially in refutation. He was perhaps hardly 
energetic enough to show much original ingenuity in discovering 
arguments. His power in what may be called "constructive" 
argument lay rather in eflective statement and arrangement, and 
in the elaborate filling-out of the skeleton-ideas of others. It is 
in refutation, in "destructive" argument, that he ai>pears to most 
advantage. He has a mercilessly steady eye for inconsistency; 
and, from his habit of referring every general statement to its 
basis of facts, often makes short work of very specious generalities. 

His jiower lies most conspicuously in the happy use of particular 
facts to demolish groundless generalities. In this way, for ex- 
ample, he conclusively exposes the commonplace outcry against 
theoretical politicians, which has been taken up even by such men 
as Macaulay : — 

" I am not ignorant of an objection that has been advanced against all 
abstract speculations concerning the origin, principle, or limitation of civil 
authority — namely, that such siieculations possess little or no influence upon 



WILLIAM PALEY. 503 

the conduct eitlier of the State or of the suhjects, of the governors or the 
governed, nor are attended with any useful consequences to either ; that ia 
times of tranquillity they are not wanted ; in times of confusion they are 
never heard. This representation, however, in my opinion, is. not just. 
Times of tumult, it is true, are not the times to learn ; but the choice which 
men make of their side and jiarty, in the most critical occasions of the 
commonwealth, may nevertheless depend upon the lessons they have re- 
ceived, the books they have read, and the ojiinions they have imbibed, in 
seasons of leisure and quietness. Some judicious persons, who were present 
at Geneva during tlie troubles whiih lately convulsed that city, thought 
they ])erceived, in the contentions there carrying on, the operation of that 
political theory which the writings of Kou.sseau, and the unbuunded esteem 
in which these writings are holden by his countrymen, had diffused among 
the people. Throughout the political disputes that have within these few 
years taken ])lace in Great Britain, in her sister kint^^dom, and in her foreign 
dependencies, it was impossible not to observe, in the language of party, in 
the resolutions of public meetings, in debate, in conversation, in the general 
strain of tliose fngiiive and diurnal addresses to the public which such occa- 
sions call forth, 1;he prevaloncy of those ideas of civil authority, which are 
dis]ilayed in the works of Mr Locke." 

He was not the man to rush into every controversy affecting the 
Church ; but, once aroused, he was an able champion of his cause. 
His paper oil ' Subscription to Articles of Faith,' written in defence 
of his patron, Bishop Law, against some animadversions, is a model 
of cool and thorough refutation. An extract or two will show how 
vigorously he argues, and how carefully he has mastered his op- 
ponent's positions : — 

"The author of the 'Considerations'" (the title of Bishop Law's work) 
"contends ver\ jirofpeily that it is one of the (irst duties a Christian owes to 
his Master 'to keep his mind open and unbiasse<l' in religious inquiries. 
Can a man be said to do this who must bring himself to assent to opinions 
propost-d by another? who enters into a profession where both his subsis- 
tence and success depend upon his continuance in a particular persuasion ? 
In answer to this we are informed that these articles are no 'rule of faith ' 
(what! not to those who subscribe them?); that ' the Church dejuives no 
man of his right of private judgment' (she cannot ; she hangs, however, a 
dead weight upon it) ; that it is 'a very unfair state of the case to call sub- 
scription a declaration of our full and final persuasion in matters ot faith ; 
thougli if it be not a ' full ' persuasion, what is it ? and ten to olie it will be 
'final,' when such consequences attend a change. That 'no man is hereby 
tied up from impartially examining the Word of God,' i.e., with the ' impar- 
tiality' of a man who must 'eat' or 'starve,' according as the examination 
turns out ; an 'impartiality' so suspected that a court of justice would not 
receive his evidence under half of the same iuHuence : nor from altering his 
opinion it he finds reason so to do; which lew, I conceive, will find, when 
the alteration must cost them so dear. If one could give credit to our author 
in what he says here, and in some other jiassages of his Answer, one would 
suppose that, in his judgment at least, subscription restrained no man from 
adopting what opinion he pleased, provided ' he does not think himself 
bound openly to maintain it ;' that 'men may n-taiii their preferments, if 
they will but keep their opinions to themselves. ' If this be what the Church 
of England means, let her say so. 

" It seemed to add strength to this objection that the judgment of most 



504 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

tliinkinjT men, being in a progressive state, their o]iinions of course must 
many of llieni eliiuii;e ; tin' evil nnd iiii<iuity of w!ii(>li tlie answerer sets forth 
witli gre;it plciisaiitry, i)Ut lias foigot at tiie same time to give us any remedy 
for the niistbrtuue, except the old woman's receipt, to leave off thinking for 
fear of thinking wrong. 

"Our autiior, good man, 'is well persuaded that the generality of the 
cleigy, when tliey oiler tlieniselves for ordination, consider seriously what 
oliice they tnke upon tliem, and firmly believe what they sub.-crilie to.' I 
am persuaded much otherwise. But as this is a ' fact,' the reader, if he be 
wise, will neither take the answerer's word for it nor mine, but form his 
own judgment from his own observation. Bishop Burnet Cdmidained above 
sixty years ago, that 'the greater part,' even then, 'subscribed the Articles 
without ever examining them, and others did it because they must do it.' 
Is it probable that, in jioiiit either of seriousness or orthodoxy, the clergy 
have much mended since ? " 

ROBERT HALL, 1764-1831. 

One of the most eminent preachers of his generation, if not the 
most eminent. He was the son of a Ba{)tist minister at Arnsby, 
near Leicester, the youngest of fourteen children. He seems to 
have been a very precocious boy : he is related to have been a great 
talker at the age of three^ to have told amusing stories at six, to 
have studied Butler's 'Analogy' and Jonathan Edwards 'On the 
Will * at nine, and to have learnt all that his schoolmaster could 
teach him at eleven. He received his higher education at a Baptist 
academy in Bristol, and at King's College, Aberdeen, where he 
passed through the regular course of study and took the degree of 
M.A. At Aberdeen he was the class-fellow and intimate com- 
panion of Sir James Mackintosh— the two young men often walk- 
ing together and debating questions in metaphysics and general 
literature. For five yeais he officiate 1 at Broadmead, near Bristol, 
as assistant-minister to a Baptist congregation, acting at the same 
time as classical tutor in the Baptist Academy. In 1790 he re- 
ceived a call from a congregation in Cambridge, and remained 
there for fifteen years, acquiring great fame as a preacher. While 
there he pul>lished some tracts and sermons, — 'Christianity Con- 
sistent with the Love of Freedom ' (1791) ; ' Apology for the Free- 
dom of the Press' (1793); 'Modern Infidelity considered with 
respect to its Influence on Society' (1799); 'Reflections on War' 
(1802); 'The Sentiinents Proper to the Present Crisis' (1803). 
What with hard study, and what with the excitement of preach- 
ing and talking, he overtaxed his strength : in 1804, and again in 
1805, he had an attack of insanity. When his health was re- 
estiiblished, he became associated with a congregation in Leicester, 
and preached there with such acceptance that the church had to be 
enlarged. He remained at Leicester for nearly twenty years. In 
1826 he removed to Bristol, upon an invitation from the church 
where he had been assistant nearly forty years before. He died at 



ROBERT HALL. 605 

Bristol in 1831. His collected works, edited with a Life by Dr 
Olintlius Gregory, contain the pieces above mentioned ; two -small 
volumes of sermons (among which may be singled out the ' Funeral 
Sernidn for the Princess Charlotte,' and 'The Glory of God in 
Concealing'); 'Terms of Communion' (an attempt to promote 
free communion among Christian Churches); and other pieces 
of minor importance. 

Hall had a large-biiilt, robust-looking figure. When in repose, 
his features wore a stern expression, his large mouth having a 
peculiarly formidable appearance; but when he was engaged in 
friendly talk, the lines were soft and winning. 

With so much of the appearance of robust health, his consti- 
tution was far from being strong in all its parts. All his life 
through he suffered from acute pains in the side and loins; and 
when he died, the cause of his sutierings was found to be exten- 
sive disease of the heart and the right kidney. The other vital 
organs were found to be quite healthy ; and this probaMy explains 
why he was able to endure his acute pains so long, and to enjoy 
life, to maintain even a buoyant flow of spirits, in the intervals of 
the keener })aroxysms. He supported nature further by large 
doses of stimulants and narcotics, drinking enormous quantities 
of tea (as many as thirty cups in an afternoon), smoking hard, and 
in his later years, when his pains increased, taking as much as a 
thousand drops of laudanum in a night. 

As in the case of Johnson, still more in the case of Hall, it would 
be unfair to estimate his intellectual powers by his published writ- 
ings. These contain much clear and vigorous argument, copious- 
ness of expression, and here and there passages of splendid 
declamation; but they do not bear out the reputation he held 
among his contemporaries, both in his peculiar brotherhood and 
tout of it. He never concentrated his powers long upon any one 
I theme. He was very unlike the steady, sagacious I'aley, who 
threw the greater part of his energy into his books. He was ready 
to s|)end himself ui)on "labour that profiteth not," at least for 
posthumous reputation. He went through a laborious course of 
reading in Latin and Greek authors, "because he thought himself 
especially defective in a tasteful and critical acquaintance with 
them ; " sparing not even " the best treatises on the Greek metres 
then extant." He went through a similarly laborious course of 
reading in mathematics, in order to comprehend Sir Isaac New- 
ton's philosophical discoveries. When Macaulay wrote his cele- 
brated article on Milton, Hall set to work at Italian, that he 
might be able to verify the comparison between Milton and Dante. 
A man so discursive could not be expected to write much at a high 
standard of excellence. Nearly all his published writings were 
composed rather hastily. He prepared only one or two of his 



506 FIIOM 1790 TO 1820. 

sermons for piiWication : most of them were published after his 
death from notes taken by hearers. Tlie inteilectual power dis- 
played in what he h;is written is very unequal ; but there are 
passages that show us wliat he was capable of, and entitle him 
to a high rank in literature. 

Like Jeremy Taylor, Hall was at once a hard student and a 
man of warm feelings. He had, as we have !<aid, in spite of all 
his acute sufferings, a keen enjoyment of life. He said of himself 
that he " enjoyed everything." He liked company extremely — ■ 
" Don't let us go yet," he was often heard to say ; " the i)reseMt 
j)lace is the best place." He tiok pleasure in the dry treatises of 
Jonathan Edwards, and spoke with enthusiasm of Cliillingworth's 
'Religion of Protestants' — "It is just," he said, "like reading a 
novel." His likes, dislikes, and admirations were numerous, and ex- 
pressed with vehemence. In argument he was excitable, and often 
lost his temper : when his companions differed from him on a point 
that he had considered well, he closed the debate with a peremp- 
tory deliverance of his opinion. When excited, he indulged freely 
in personal sarcasms. In genial company he was the gayest of 
companions ; uttering his opinions witliout reserve, playing on his 
friends with affectionate raillery, and showing a graeful sense of 
the regard paid to his talents. With unaffected piety he often took 
himself to task for not making his conversation more spiritually 
edifying, and made good resolutions to amend ; but though he 
entered a company with the best intentions, his genial impulses 
were too strong. 

For active life he was eminently unqualified He was tolerably 
methodical in his studies, and there is no record of his being 
diverted by other interests from the due preparation of his weekly 
discourses. But in the matter of active duties lie needed constant 
supervision. He became absorbed in his books, and forgot his 
engagements. His deacons often had to look for him in his study. 
He was sometimes ignorant of the day of the week : and if he 
went to London, and engaged to deliver letters for his friends, the 
chances were that he brought them back in his pocket. 

Opinio7is. — Hall caused some suspicion and anxiety among his 
graver brethren l>y the liberality of his views, and his free remarks 
on names venerable in the Church. There was no moroseness, no 
austerity, in his religious opinions : as we have seen, he was by 
nature lively and full of gay spirits. He was latitudinarian in 
his views of Church government, inclining to Pope's epigram, 
" Whate'er is best administered is best." In his 'Terms of Com- 
munion,' he advocated tlie admission of every denomination of 
Christians to the communion-tables of every other. There his in- 
dulgence stopped. He had Johnson's hatred of infidelity and infidels. 



ROBERT HALL. 507 

He wrote with great spirit against ecclesiastical and political 
intolerance to Dissenters. 

He took little part in pf)litical controversies. His first work, 
* Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom,' was designed 
to vindicate the exertions of Christian ministers in the cause of 
political freedom ; but though he defended the principle, he him- 
self ha 1 no natural turn for the work. In his 'Apology for the 
Freedom of the Press and for General Liberty,' he appears as one 
of the earliest advocates for Parliamentary Pieform. 

ELEMENTS OF STYLE. 

Vocahidary. — His command of langunge is sufficiently copious, 
though not by any means of the first order. This is perhaps due 
in no small measure to the course of his reading. He spent com- 
paratively little time upon the masters of the English language. 
His favourite authors were the writers of systematic and contro- 
Tersial theology and metaphysics. From this circumstance his 
command of the great popular body of the language is limited in 
comparison with what might be expected with his powers of verbal 
memory. And from the same circumstance his diction is Latin- 
ised and heavily encumbered with the technical phrases of argu- 
mentation. 

Sentences. — In the structure of his sentences he is a close imita- 
tor of Johnson. He acknowledged that in his youth he "aped 
Johnson, and preached Johnson," but said that he found the 
diction too cumbrous, and abandoned all attempts to make it a 
model. His sentences, however, although shorter, bear unmis- 
takable traces of Johnson. He h;is not the same abrupt way of 
introducing generalities, but he imitates all the arts of balance, 
from the ponderous swing to the sharp emphatic point. 

QUALITIES OF STYLE. 

Simplicity. — Hall's diction is not suited for a popular style. 
Not only does it want pictorial embellishments, except in the 
more highly wrought passages : it is jiositively dry ; he has a 
preference for heavy Latin derivatives, and for abstract forms of 
expression — the result, as we have said, in some measure, of his 
favourite studies. Such expressions as — "The author knows not 
with certainty to wliom to ascribe it. He believes it fell from the 
pen of an illustrious female., Mrs More" — belong to a stilted ordir 
of composition very shocking to modern advocates of the Queen's 
English. Apart from the occasional use of stilted and unfamiliar 
words, the general cast of the ex[)ression is excessively abstract. 
Any passage will illustrate this : let us take (from the ' (Sentiments 



508 FROM 171)0 TO 1820. 

proper to the Present Crisis') some remarks upon our reasons for 
expecting to be victorious over the French : — 

"Tliey appear to entertain mistaken sentiments, who rely with too much 
confii.lence for success on our supposed superiority in virtue to our enemies. 
Such a contiileiice betrays inattention to the actual conduct of Pr'ivideiice. 
Wlierever there is conscious <;nilt, there is room to apprehend ])unislnu('!it ; 
nor is it for the criminal to decide where the merited punishment shall tirst 
fall. The cup of divine displeasure is, indecil, ]in'sentf(l successively to 
guilty nations, but it by no means invariably bcffins with tlmse wiio have 
run the greatest caner in i.'uiit. On the contrary, 'judgment often begins 
at tlie ho'use of God ; ' and He rrei[uently chastises His servants with severity 
before He proeeeils to the dotiuction of His enemies. He assuied Abraiiarn 
his seed should be afllicted in E<;ypt for four hundred years, and that after 
their expiration, 'the nation that afllicted them he would judge.' " 

There is undeniably a certain dignity in this mode of expres- 
sion, but it is very much unsuited to the easy apprelieusion of 
people generally. A simple writer would probably prefer some 
such beginning as this : — 

"We do wrong to trust in our being more virtuous than our enemies. 
Even though we are more virtuous, that is no reason for believuig that Pro- 
viilence, in the fust instance at least, will fight on our side. We may lie 
better thiin our enemies, yet we cannot pretend to be jieifcct : if we aie 
guilty, we deserve to be punished, and we have no right to complain if we 
aie punislicd before others more guilty than oui selves. Consider the deal- 
ings of Providence in past times. Have the most wicked nations always 
tieen the hrst to receive punishment? No; on the contrary, 'judgment 
often begins at the house of God,'"&c. 

Clearness. — Hall's mind had a natural craving for broad com- 
prehensive views, and he usually states his case with great per- 
spicuity. His pursuit of abstract argumentati\e literature also, 
while it confirmed him in the use of unfamiliar language, accus- 
tomed him to a certain exactness of expression. In his contro- 
versial works he makes copious use of logical formalities, and 
gives evidence of a concentrated effort to lie clear in his phrases 
of reference and in the general conduct of his discourse, as well 
as precise and discriminate in the employment of doubtful terms. 

Strength. — The distinguishing excellence of Hall's style consists 
in general vigour and elevation of language. His astonishing 
poi)ularity was probably due to the occasional bursts uf splendid 
eloquence. 

His ' Apology for the Freedom of the Press ' is written with 
great spirit. The following bears out Avhat we say as regards 
general vigour and elevation : — 

" Between the period of national honour aTid comjilete degeneracy, there 
is usually an interval of national vanity, during which e.xaiiiph'S of virtue 
are recounted and adniiretl without being iiiiitateii. The liomans were 
never more proud of their aucestors than when tliey ceased to resemble 



ROBERT HALL. 509 

tliem. From being the freest and most liij]^h-si'irited people in the world, 
they suddenly fell into the tamest and most abji-ct subinission. Let not 
the name of Britons, my countrymen, too nuu-li elate j'ou ; nor even think 
yourselves safe wiiile you abate one jot of that holy jealousy by whieli your 
liberties have hitherto been secured. The richer the iuheritanee bequeathed 
you, the more it merits j'our care for its preservation. The possession must 
be continued by that spirit with which it was at first acquired ; and as it 
was gained by vigilance, it will be lost by sujiineness. A degenerate race 
repose on the merits of their forefathers ; the virtuous create a fund of their 
own. The former look back to their ancestors to hide their shame ; the 
latter look forward to posterity, to levy a tribute of adndration. In vaiu 
will you contide in the forms of a free constitution. Unless you reanimate 
these forms with fresh vigour, they will be melancholy memorials of what 
you once were, and haunt you with the shade of departed liberty. A silent 
stream of corruption poured over the whole land, has tainted every branch 
of the administration with decay. On your temperate but maidy exeriions 
depend the happiness and freedom of the latest )iosterity. That Assembly 
which sits by riglit of representation, will be liitle inclined to oppose your 
will, expressed in a firm, decisive manner. You may be deafened by 
clamour, misled by sophistry, or weakened by division, but you cannot be 
despised with imimniiy. A vindictive ministry may hang the terrors of 
criminal prosecution over the heads of a few with success ; but at their peril 
will they attempt to intimidate a nation. The trick of associations, of jire- 
tendeil jilots, and silent insurrections, will oppose a feeble bairier to the 
impression of the popular mind." 

The concluding expression is an example of our author's peculiar 
failing, the introduction here and there of an incongruous mean- 
ness of expression, of a word or phrase out of tune as it were. 
" The imx>ression of the ^wpular mind " is a feeble ending ; " the 
will of a u'hvle people," or some such phrase, would have been 
more in keeping. These occasional lapses are probably the results 
of his chronic malady; when an acute paroxysm came upon him, 
he must often have ended otf a sentence with the first form that 
occurred, having no ]>atience to see that it harmonised. 

A good example of his loftiest flights is the animated address at 
the close of ' Sentiments proper to the Present Crisis.' The passage 
is often quoted : — 

" By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty ambition, 
the liberties of Europe have been gradually extinguished : the subjugation 
of Holland, Switzerlami, and the free towns of Germany, has completed that 
catastrophe ; and we are the only ])eople in the eastern hemisphere who are 
in possession of equal laws and a free constitution. Freedom, driven from 
every spot on the Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she 
always chose for her favourite abode ; but she is pursued even here, and 
threatened with destruction. The inundation of lawless power, after cover- 
ing the whole earth, threatens to follow us here ; and we are most exactly, 
most critically placed, in the only aperture where it can be successfully re- 
pelled, in the Thermopylae of the universe. As Car as the interests of free- 
dom are concerned, the most important by far of sublunary interests, you, 
my countrymen, stand in the capacity of the federal representatives of the 
human race ; tor with you it is to determine (under God) in what condition 
the latest posterity shall be born ; their fortunes are entrusted to your care. 



510 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

and on your conduct at this moment depends the colour and comyilexion of 
their destiny. If libeity, after being extinguished on tlie Continent, is 
suffered to expire licre, whence is it ever to emerge in the midst of tliat 
thii-k night that will invest it ? It remains with you then to (iecide wlietlier 
that freedom, at wliose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from tiie sleep 
of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation in everything great and good ; 
the freedom whicli dispelled the mists of superstition, and invited the 
nations to behold their God ; whose magic touch kindled the rays of genius, 
the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence ; the; freedom wliich 
poured into our lap o]>ulence and aits, and etnbellished life with innumer- 
able institutions and improvements, tiil it became a theatre of wonders ; it 
is for you to d<'cide whether this freedom shall yet survive, or he covered 
with a funeral pall, and wra])t in eternal gloom. It is not necessary to await 
your determination. In the solicitude you feel to approve yourselves worthy 
of such a trust, every thought ot wljat is afllicting in warfare, every appre- 
hension of danger must vanish, and you arc impatient to mingle in the 
battles of the civilised world. Go, then, ye defenders of your countiy, 
accompanied with every auspicious omen ; ailvance with alacrity into the 
field, where God Himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much 
interested in your success not to lend you her aid ; she will shed over this 
enfer]irise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many 
will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the faitliful of eveiy name 
will em]iloy that prayer which has (lOwer with God ; the feeble hands which 
are unequal to any otlicr weapon will grasp the sword of the Spirit ; and 
from myriads of humble, contrite hearts, tiie voice of intercession, siijiidica- 
tion, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shouts of 
battle and the shock of arms. 

The continuation of this passage, which is not so often quoted, 
exhibits no falling off of power. There is not perhaps in the 
whole range of oratory anything more inspiring than the con- 
cluding invocations : — 

" While you have everything to fear from the success of the enemy, j'ou 
have every means of jircventing that success, so that it is next to impossible 
for victory not to crown your exertions. The extent of your resources, under 
God, is equid to the justice of your cau.se. But should Providence deter- 
mino otherwise, should you fall in this struggle, should tlie nation fall, you 
will have the satisfaction (the purest allotted to man) of having perfoiined 
your part ; your names will be eniolled with the most ilhistiions dead ; 
while ]iosterity, to the end of time, as ol'ten as they revolve the events of 
this jieriod (and they will incessantly revolve them), will turn to you a 
reverential eye, while they mourn over the freedom which is entombed in 
your sepulclire. 1 cannot but imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and 
]tatriots, of every age and country, are bending from their elevated seats to 
witness this contest, as if they were incajiable, till it be brought to a favour- 
able issue, of enjoying their eternal repo.se. Enjoy that repose, illustrious 
immortals! Your mantle fell when you ascended ; and thousands inflamed 
with your spirit, ami impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by 
Uiiii that sMclh v]tnn the throne, and livclhfor ever and ever, they will pro- 
tect freeilom in her last asylum, and never desert that cause wlii(di you 
su.stained by your labour.s, and cemented with your blood. And thou, sole 
Ruler among the childieu ot men. to wliom the shii Ids of the earth Ixdong, 
gird on thy .iirord, thuu Mont MUjhty : go forth with our hosts in the day of 
buttle ! Impart, in addition to their heicditary valour, that confidence of 



ROBERT HALL. 511 

snfcess which spiiiirrs from tliy presence ! Pour into their hearts the spirit 
of departed heroes ! Inspire tliein with thine own ; and while led by thine 
hand, and fighting under thy banners, open tliou their eyes to behold in 
every valley and in eveiy plain, what thy jirojiliet lieheld by the same 
illumination — chariots of hie and horsi'S of tire ! Then shall the strong man 
he as tou\ and the maker of it as a spark ; and they shall both burn together, 
and none shall quench them. " 

III the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte there are 
several soaring passages. The following is one of the most 
striking : — 

"What, my brethren, if it be lawful to indulge such a thought, what 
would be the funeral obsequies of a lost sou! ? Where shall we find the 
ti-ars lit to be wept at such a spectacle ? or, could we realise the calamity in 
all its extent, what tokens of cornmiseiation and concern would be deemed 
e(iiial to the occasion ? Would it suffice for the sun to veil his light, and 
tiie moon her brightness ; to cover the ocean with movirning, and the heavens 
with sackloth ? or weie the whole fabric of nature to become animated and 
Tocal, would it be jiossible lor her to utter a groan too deep, or a cry too 
piercing, to express the magnitude and extent of such a catastrophe ? " 

Another of his most celebrated flights occurs in the magnificent 
sermon on 'The Glory of God in Concealing.' 

Pathos. — We remarked that Jeremy Taylor describes the miser- 
ies of human life more as a poet than as a preacher of morality. 
Hall was opposed to this on principle. He thought that the 
preacher should endeavour not so much to be tender and touch- 
ing, as to stir his hearers to virtuous action. He distinguishes 
clearly the pathetic and the practical treatment of distress : — 

"There are kinds of distress founded on the passions, which, if not 
applauded, are at least admired in tlieir excess, as implying a peculiar 
retinenient of sensibility in the mind of the sufferer. Embellished by 
taste, and wrouglit by the magic of genius into innumerable forms, they 
turn grief into a luxury, and draw from the eyes of millions delicious tears. 
. . . Nor can I reckon it among the imju'ovemeuts of the present age, 
that, by the multiplication of works of fiction, the attention is diverted 
from scenes of real to those of imaginary distress ; from the distress which 
demands relief, to that which admits of embellishment : in consequence of 
whicli the understanding is enervated, the heart is corrupted, and those feel- 
ings vhich locre designed to stimulate to active benevolence are emploj/cd in 
nourishing a sickly seriiiibility. . . . Though it cannot be denit^d that 
by diffusing a warmer colouring over the visions of fancy, sensibility is often 
a source ol ex(iui>ite pleasures to others if not to the }i(issessor, yet it sliould 
never be confounded with benevolence. ... A good man may have 
nothing of it ; a bad man may have it in abundance." 

Wherever, therefore, Hall describes scenes of misery, he does so 
in such away as to "stimulate to active benevolence," and make.s 
no attempt to diffuse over them the warmer colouring that "draws 
from the eyes of millions delicious tears." His well-known picture 
of the horrors of war is an example. 

Besides, his genius inclined much more to sublimity than to 



512 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

patli03. In the Funeral Sermon for tlie Princess Cliarlotto, from 
which we have already given a quotation, he passes lightly over 
the aflfecting aspects of death, dilates in magnificent strains on 
such collateral themes as the grandeurs of eternity, and exhibits 
"the uncertainty of human i)rospects, and the instability of 
earthly distinctions," as considerations to "check our presump- 
tion, and appal our hearts." 

And again, for purposes of pathos, his diction is too Latinised : 
language can hardly be touching unless it is simple. His frequent 
use of controversial forms is peculiarly jarring, when the theme is 
of a tender nature. Take for example his ' Refle<'tions on the In- 
evitable Lot of Human Life.' He begins in a determined tone, 
as if he meant to overbear a very obstinate opponent — " There is 
nothiiif) better established hi/ universal observation^ than that the 
condition of man upon earth is less or more an afflicted condition : 
'Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.' " Through- 
out the sernKm the melancholy train of reflection is harslily broken 
by these disputatious turns of expression. Thus — " If we are 
tempted to repine at seeing others in peace and prosperity, while 
we are harassed and distressed, ive form a most inadequate and 
premature judgment. Their period of trial will arrive," &c. In 
expressing the pathos of pious confidence he introduces the same 
fatal intellectual hardness. The effect of the following passage is 
destroyed by the two cLiuses marked in italics — a chilling limita- 
tion, and a no less lowering comparison : — 

" That the Lord reigns, is one of those truths which lie at the very basis 
of piety ; nor is there any more consoling. It tills the licart, nndcr a ri'i/d 
imprecision of it, with a checifiil hope and unrnffled trancpiillity, amidst the 
changes and trials of life, w/dch we shall look for in vain from any otlier 
quarter. " 

The last sentence should have been expressed in some such way 
as follows : — 

"Amidst the changes and trials of life, it fills the heart with cheerful 
hope and unruffled tranquillity." 

KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 

Persuasion. — Hall's Latinised diction and argumentatative forms 
were against his popularity as a preacher. How it came about 
that he was popular in spite of these drawbacks is explained by 
John Foster : — 

"There was a remission of strict connection of thought towards the con- 
clusion, where lie tlircw himself loose into a strain of declamation, always 
earnest, and often fervid. This was of great etiect in securing a di-gree of 
favour with many, to whom so intellectual a preacher would not otherwise 



THEOLOGY. 513 

have Tieen acceptable ; it was this that reconciled pers-ons of simple piety 
and little cultivated unilerstandinj^. Many who might follow him with 
very imperfect apprehension and saiisfaction throngli the preceding parts, 
could reckon on being warmly interested at tlie end." 

On the whole, however, his was not a style of preaching that 
was likely to have much practical effect on the conduct of hia 
hearers. He was much too general both in his exaltation of 
virtue and in his denunciation of vice. John Foster relates that 
after a sermon on the sin and absurdity of covetousness, one of 
the hearers observed to another — "An admirable sermon — yet 
why was s?fc^ a sermon preached? For probably not one person 
in the congregation, though it is not wanting in examples of 
the vice in question, would take the discourse as at all applicable 
to himself." "Too many of tlie attendants," .says Foster, "wit- 
nessed some of the brightest displays rather with the feeling of 
looking at a fine picture than of being confronted by a faithful 
mirror ; and went away equally pleased with a preacher that was 
so admirable, and with themselves for having the intelligence and 
taste to admire him." 

"It appeared a serious defect in Mr Hall's preaching, that he pra-tically 
took on liim too little of tliis responsibility of distinguishing degrees of 
Christian virtue. In teinpcjraiy oblivion of the rule that tlicoretic descrip- 
tion sliould keep existing fact so nuich in view that a right adjustment may 
be made between them, lie would ex])atiate in elotiuent latitude on the 
Christian character, bright and 'full-orhed' in all its perfections, of con- 
tempt of the woild, victory over temptation, elevated devotion, assimilation 
to tlie divine image, zeal f(jr the divine glory, triumphant faith, ex]iansive 
charity, sanctity of Hie ; without an intimation, at the time or afterward, 
that all this, so sublime if it were realised, s<> (jbligatory as the attainment 
toward which a Christian should be, at whatever distance, aspirmg, is yet 
unhappily to be subjected, on behalf of our poo: nature, to a cautious dis- 
cussion of modilieations and degrees ; esj>eeially when the anxious c^uestiou 
comes to be, WImt deficiencies prove a man to be no Chriatiani" 



OTHER WRITERS. 
THEOLOGY. 

About the beginning of this period the Evangelical movement 
inaugurated by Wesley and Whitetield among the lower classes, 
began to make itself powerfully felt in higher circles. One of its 
chief leaders was Charles Simeon (1759-1836), appointed vicar of 
Trinity Church in Cambridge in 1.7S2. Simeon was, in the face 
of very bitter opposition, an energetic j^reacher of evangelical 
doctrine, and a generous patron of pious young men, such as 
Henry Martin and Henry Kirke White. He bore the chief part 
in originating the missionary schemes of tie English Church. 
His 'Horse Homileticae ' (complete in 21 vols., 1832) is a repr© 

2 K 



514 FKOM 17^0 TO 1820. 

sentative exposition of evangelical views. — Another repiesenta- 
tive work of this school of religious thought, of a more popular 
character, is Wilberforce's ' Practical Christianity,' published by 
the great agitator for the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1797. 
This work has gone through fifty editions in England and America, 
and has been translated into several European languages. 

To the same school belonged the brothers Milner, — Joseph 
Milner (1744-1797), vicar of Hull, and Isaac Milner (1751-1820), 
Senior Wrangler, Master of Queen's College, and Dean of Car- 
lisle, — two sturdy-minded natives of Yorkshire, who raised them- 
selves from huml)le life. The ' History of the Church ' was begun 
by the elder brother in 1794, and finished liy the younger in 1812. 
Isaac Milner is said to have been the means of converting Wilber- 
force to evangelical piety, and he was an honoured meml:)er of the 
society that we have already mentioned as influencing the youth 
of Maiaulay. 

With these may be linked, as an Evangelical of a different type, 
John Foster (1770-1843), a Baptist clergyman, a friend of Robert 
Hall's, known in gener.d literature as a writer of essays. Foster 
was far from having Hall's reputation as a preacher: he was a 
reserved kind of man, and his power lay more exclusively with 
the pen. The best known of his essays, which have passed through 
many e litions, is one " On Decision of Character." He cultivated 
originality both in thought and in expression. His command of 
language an! illustration is copious, but his style has a want of 
flow, an air of labour. He repeats an idea again and again, but 
the successive re})etitions do not, like the varied expression of 
Chalmers, make the meaning more and more luminous; they 
often burden rather than illuminate the general reader, and they 
strike the critic as a laboured exercise iu the accumulation of 
synonyms and similitudes. 

We may place iu another group the divines that engaged deeply 
in politi(;s. Chief among these (excluding Bishop Horsley, who 
remained during the first half of this i)eriod the Jupiter of Con- 
servative Churchmen) stands Dr Samuel Parr (1747-1825), known 
in his day as the Whig Samuel Johnson, but by the present gen- 
eration hardly distinguished from the founder of " Parr's Life 
Pills." Parr was a man of unquestionable aljility, and the oblivion 
that has overtaken his name is due to his having left no great 
work on any great suliject. His fame rested upon two accom- 
plishments, both perishable foundations, — Latin scholarship and 
powers of conversation. His pre-eminence in Latin composition 
was universally acknowledLCcd : although a Whig, he was selected 
to write the epitai)hs of Johnson and of Burke. His ])owers of 
conversation are attested by evidence equally unequivocal : al- 
though he held no higher station than the curacy of Hatton, he 



THEOLOGY. 515 

was received at the tables of the Wliig nobility, and corresponded 
with "nearly one-half of our British peerage, and select members 
of the royal family." His talents secured this admission to high 
life in spite of a rude dogmatic manner, a homely person, and 
eccentricity in the matter of dress. Besides this inilirect evidence 
(if his social acceptability, we have the direct evidence of Johnson, 
whom the lesser Samuel imitated in the rudeness of his manner — 
'• Sir," he said to Langton, "I am obliged to you for having asked 
me this evening. Parr is a fair man. I do not know when I have 
had an occasiim of such free controversy." With all this it is 
strange that Parr never received the coveted distinction of a 
bishopric: the explanation probably is that his chief patron, Fox, 
died just as the Whigs came into power, and that his other friends 
in high circles were not^o indulgent to his arrogant eccentricities 
and classical licence of personal invective. His style was grandi'o- 
quent to an extrava<;ant extreme. De Quiucey speaks of " his 
periodic sentences, with their ample Vdlnme of sound and self- 
revolving rhythmus ; " and of "his artful antithesis, and solemn 
anti-libration of cadences." And Sydney Smith, who reviewed his 
' Spital Sermon' in the first number of the 'Edinburgh Review,' 
characterises the style as follows : " The Doctor is never simple 
and natural for a single instant. Everything smells of the rheto- 
rician. He never appears to forget himself, or to be hurried by his 
subject into obvious language. Every expression seems to be the 
result of artifice and intention ; and as to the worthy dedicatees, 
the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, unless the sermon be clone into 
English by a person of honour, they may perhaps be flattered by 
the Doctor's politeness, but they can never be much edified by his 
meaning. Dr Parr seems to think that eloquence consists not in 
an exuberance of beautiful images — not in simple and sublime 
conceptions — not in the language of the passions ; but in a studi- 
ous airangement of sonorous, exotic, and sesquipedal words." 

Another clergyman and politician, more successful in the world 
than Parr, was Richard Watson (1737-1816), successively Second 
Wrangler at Cambridge, Professor of Chemistry, Professor of 
Divinity, and Bishop of LlandafF. In politics he was a moderate 
Whig; he vindicated tlie principles of the French Revolution at 
the outset, but in 1798 he issued 'An Address to the People of 
Great Britain, warning them of the danger which the French 
Revolution taught them.' He also wrote 'An Apology for Chris- 
tianity,' in reply to Gibbon; and 'An Apology for the Bible,' in 
reply to Paine. His own orthodoxy was suspected. He was an 
exceedingly ambitious man, and although more than once in his 
life he received undeserved promotion, yet in his autobiography he 
is indignant that the Whigs did not prefer him to a more lucrative 
see. — Watson's anti-revolutionary address was fiercely commented 



516 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

oil by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801), the son of an English rector, 
who took orders in the Church, but left it from conscientious 
scru[>les. He was a very srholaily man, and i)iiblished a tiana- 
Jation of the New Testament, and * An Inquiry concerning the 
Person of Clirist.' An earnest creature, of sensitive excitable 
temperament, he felt warmly, and gave fearless expression to his 
convictions. He was prosecute 1 fur his reply to the Bishop of 
Liantlati", and imprisoned fur two years. He survived his imprison- 
ment only a few months. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

In this generation the philosophy of Reid was upheld by Dugald 
Stewart (1753-1828), Professor of Mathei#itics, and subsequently, 
from 1 7 85 to 18 10, Piofessor of Moral Philosophy, in Edinburgh. 
He propounded little that was original in philosophy; his opinions 
weie for the most part modifications of Reid ; but as an expositor 
of pliilosophical doctrines, his reputation stands deservedly high. 
Most of his works were composed after his retirement from the 
Chair of Philosophy in 1810. A remark is sometimes made that 
his best works were his pupils; the }ilain paraphrase of which is 
that he was a person of stately manners and polished oratory, and 
— a rare thing then for a man in his position — a Whig in politics, 
and that several scions of the Whig nobility were placed in Edin- 
bnigh under his care. Along with a fine presence, Stewart pos- 
sessed great natural eloquence. James Mill used to declare that 
though he had heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most ad- 
mired speeches, he never heard anything nearly so eloquent as 
S'lnie of the lectures of Professor Stewart. While his account of 
Mind coincides in the main with Reid's, the statement and illus- 
tratinn of the doctrines, and the arguments on points of dispute, 
are his own. He is the most ornate and elegant of our philosophi- 
cal writers. His summaries of philosophical systems are some- 
times praised as being especially perspicuous and interesting. His 
manner as a controversialist is peculiarly agreeable when taken 
iii contrast to the hard-hitting and open ridicule of such contro- 
versialists as Priestley : Stewart's cojiious lubricated eloquence is 
much better fitted to conciliate opponents than win assent. 

Thomas Brown (1778-1820) was api)ointed colleague to Stewart 
in the Moral Philosophy Chair in 1810, and discharged the duties 
of the office till his death in 1820. Brown is an often-quoted case 
of precocious genius : he composed and published ' Observations 
on Darwin's Zoonomia ' before he had completed his twentieth 
ye.ir. He was one of the band of young men that originated the 
' Edinburgh Review,' and he wrote a paper on Kant in the second 
number : but he took offence and seceded before the Review was 



PHILOSOPHY. 517 

many months old. In 1805 he published an 'Inquiry into the 
Kelation of Cause and Effect.' During the ten years of his pro- 
fessoriate, he published several poems, which possessed little origi- 
nal merit, and soon relapsed into the province of the antiquarian. 
In his philosoi>hy, Brown agreed with Reid and Stewart in ascrib- 
ing an intuitive origin to certain beliefs, and differed from them in 
some minor points of nice distinction relating to external percep- 
tion. He was a very popular lecturer : he was more sentimental 
than Stewart, his style was more florid, and his criticism of his 
predecessors was acrimonious and racy, not to say flippant. 

The most influential and original philosopher of this generation 
was Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the founder of the science of 
Jurisprudence, and the first to make a thorough application of the 
principle of Utility to practical affairs. The son of a London 
solicitor, he was sent to Westminster School, and to Oxford, and 
bred to the law ; but, cherishing a stiong repugnance to legal 
abuses, he refrained from the practice of his profession, and lived 
the life of a studious recluse. 

His character and writings are very impartially discussed in a 
well-known essay by Mr John Stuart Mill (' Dissertations,' vol. i.) 
*' Bentham has been in this age and country the great questioner 
of things established. It is by the influence of the modes of 
thought w ith which his writings inoculated a considerable number 
of thinking men, that the yoke of authority has been broken, and 
innumerable opinions, formerly received on tradition as incontest- 
able, are put ujton their defence, and required to give an account 
of themselves." He "carried the war of criticism and of refuta- 
tion, the conflict with falsehood and absurdity, into the field of 
practical abuses." Nor was he merely a negative, destructive, or 
subversive philosopher. His mind was eminently positive, con- 
structive, synthetic. He never pulled down without building up. 
After showing that an institution was inconsistent with his funda- 
mental principles, he always suggested a substitute that was con- 
sistent therewith. His method of piocedure was more important 
than his results. His method " may be shortly described as the 
method of detail ; of treating wholes by separating them into their 
parts, abstractions by resolving them into things, — classes and 
generalities l>y distinguishing them into the individuals of which 
they are made up ; and breaking every question into pieces before 
attempting to solve it." The method was not by any means 
absolutely original; but "whatever originality there was in the 
method, in the sul)jects he applied it to, and in the rigidity with 
which he adhered to it, there was the greatest." Again, " the 
generalities of his philosophy itself have little or no novelty. To 
ascribe any to the doctrine that general utility is the foundation 
of morality, would imply great ignorance of the history of philo- 



518 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

sophy, of general literature, ami of Bentliam's own writings. He 
derived the idea, as he says himself, from Helvetius; and it was 
the doctrine, no less, of the religious philosophers of that age, 
prior to ]»eid and Beattie." As regards the results, those achieved 
in the field of Ethics are not nearly so valuable as those achieved 
in the field of Jurisprudence. [The value of Benthaiu's labnurs iii 
Juris] )ru(lcnce is universally admitted. Even his somewhat un- 
friendly critic Macaulay says, with characteristic sweep, that he 
" found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science."] In 
Ethics his conclusions are marred by the peculiarities of his own 
character. " Bentham's contempt, then, of all other schools of 
thinkers, his determination to create a philosophy wholly out of 
the materials furnished by his own mind, and l)y minds like his 
own, was his first disqualification as a philosopher. His second 
was the incom|>leteness of his own mind as a rej^resentative of 
universal huuian nature. In many of the most natural and strong- 
est feelings of human nature he had no sympathy ; from many of 
its graver experiences he was altogether cut off;" and he was 
deficient in the power by which one human being enters into the 
mind and circumstances of another. " His knowledge of human 
nature is wholly empirical ; and the empiricism of one who has 
had little experience. He had neither internal exjierience nor 
external; the quiet, even tenor of his life, and his healthiness of 
mind, conspired to exclude him from both. He never knew pros- 
perity and adversity, passion nor satiety. He never had even 
Liie experiences which sickness gives ; he lived from childhood to 
the age of eighty five in boyish health. He knew no dejection, no 
heaviness of heart. He was a boy to the last. . . . Other 
ages and other nations were a blank to him for purposes of in- 
struction. He measured them but by one standard ; their know- 
ledge of facts, and their capability to take correct views of utility, 
and merge all other objects in it." — His style is much better in 
his early wiitings than iu his later. His ' Fragment on Govern- 
ment,' published anonymously, was so well written that it was 
attributed to some of the greatest masters of style at the time. 
Even in the most involved of his later writings we meet with many 
happy turns of expression, and with imagery " quaint and humor- 
ous, or bold, forcible, and intense." His great fault is intricacy. 
The origin of this is well explained by Mr Mill : " Froui the same 
principle in Bentham came the intricate and involved style, which 
makes his later writings books for the student only, not the gen- 
eral reader. It was fiom his jjcrpetually aiming at impracticable 
precision. Nearly all his earlier, and many parts of his later 
writings, are models, as we have already observed, of light, play- 
ful, and popular style: a Benthaniiana might be made of passages 
worthy of Addison or Goldsmith. But in his later years and more 



riiiLosoriiY. 519 

advanced studies, lie fell into a Latin or German structure of sen- 
tence, foreign to the genius of the English language. He could 
not bear, for the sake of clearness and the reader's ease, to say, as 
ordinary men are content to do, a little more than the truth in one 
sentence, and correct it in the next. The whole of the qualifying 
remarks which he intended to make, he insisted upon embedding 
as parentheses iu the very middle of the sentence itself. And 
thus, the sense being so long suspended, and attention being re- 
quired to the accessory ideas before the principal idea had been 
properly seized, it became difficult, without some practice, to make 
out the train of thought." 

With Bentham, Mr Mill ranks as the other great " seminal mind " 
of England in that generation the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
(1772-1834). Bentbam's leading purpose was to provide good sub- 
stitutes for the bad side in existing institutions. Coleridge in- 
sisted rather upon the good side, and the propriety of making the 
most of that. Coleridge was also the first great English champion 
of German transcendental philosophy. It was principally through 
conversation that he exercised his influence. To some extent, 
also, he disseminated his opinions in print, although he was too 
confirmed an opium-eater to be a persistent worker. In 1796 he 
issued nine numbers of a Radical weekly paper, called ' The 
Watchman'; in 1809-10 twenty-seven numbers of the 'Friend,' — 
an unfinished project designed to convey a consistent l)ody of 
opinions in Theology, Philosophy, and Politics; in 1816 'The 
Statesman's Manual, or the Bilile the best Guide to Political Skill 
and Foresight, a Lay Sermon'; in 1817 'A Second Lay Sermon,' 
"on the existing distresses and discontents"; in 1817 'Biographia 
Literaria,' a history of the development of his own opinions ; in 
1825 'Aids to Ptefiection.' His prose style is copious, and has 
something of the soft melody of his verse. 

To this period belong also two well-known names in Political 
Economy, the Eev. T. R. Malthus (1766-1836) and David Ricardo 
(1772-1823). Malthus's celebiated work on ' Poi)ulation ' ap])eared 
in 1798. Ricardo's 'Political Economy' was published in 181 7. 
Both are moderately perspicuous writers, but neither of them pos- 
sessed any special gift of style. 

Archibald Alison (1757-1839), son of an Edinburgh magis- 
trate, educated at Glasgow and at Oxford, latterly an Ejiiscopal 
clergyman in Edinburgh, is known in letters as the father of 
the historian. Sir Archibald, and as the author of an ' Essay on 
Taste,' published in 1790, and in i8ri commended and adopted 
in its leading positions by the critical potentate, Francis Jeffrey. 
Alison denied that there is any intrinsic pleasure either in 
Sound, in colour, or in form. He resolved the emotions of sub- 
limity and beauty into associations with primitive sensibilities. 



520 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

The 'Essay' is written in a very readable style for a work of 
abstruse analysis. 

Another literary man of this generation, best known through 
his son, is Isaac Disraeli (1766-1848), author of 'Curiosities 
of Literature,' 'Literary Miscellanies,' 'Quarrels of Authors,' 
' Calamities of Authors,' &c. His ' Literary Character,' an at- 
tempt to analyse the constituents of literary genius, was a 
favourite with Byron. In the writings of the elder Disraeli we 
meet with occasional touches of the felicity of expression so 
conspicuous in his more distinguished son. 

HISTORY. 

The most considerable history published in the early part of 
this period was Mitford's 'History of Greece.' William Mitford 
(1744-1827) was the son of an English proprietor near Southamp- 
ton, served with Gibbon as an officer in the Hampshire militia, 
and sat for many years in Parliament. His History appeareil in 
successive volumes at long intervals between 1784 and 1818. The 
writer was a stanch Conservative, and part of the success of the 
work, in those days of political ai>prehension, was due to the use 
he made of the proceedings and the disasters of the Grecian re- 
publics to point a moral against democra(;y. The work was very 
derisively reviewed by the young Whig Macaulay in one of his 
first efforts, and it was humorously pronounced by the Conserva- 
tive De Quincey to be " choleric in excess, and as entirely partial, 
as nearly perfect in its injustice, as human infirmity would allow." 
Mitford's style is in general verbose, periodic, and heavy. There 
is, however, a certain animation in his narratives of striking events; 
and his ex|)ression sometimes receives a warm colour from the 
strength of his feelings as a political partisan. He is included by 
De Quincey among " orthographic mutineers," eccentrics in the 
matter of spelling. 

The history of Greece was written also by John Gillies (1747- 
1836), an alumnus of Glasgow, and travelling tutor to a son of the 
Earl of Hopetoun, who in 1793 succeeded Kobertson as historio- 
grapher-royal for Scotland, and figured in tlie literary society of 
"Modern Athens " during the first quarter of this century. His 
' History of Greece' was published in 1786. He published also 
translations from Aristotle, wrote upon Frederick the Great, and 
continued his history down to the reign of Augustus. All his 
works have been eclipsed, as regards both matter and manner. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

William Cohbett (1762-1835) raised himself, by the force of his 
self-educated literary powers, from the station of a private soldier 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 521 

to a seat in Parliament. He could not rememl er a time when hp 
did not earn his own living. An impulsive, self-willed lad, work- 
ing with his father, a small farmer in Surrey, he first made an 
abortive attempt to goto sea; then ran away to London and 
obtained employment as an attorney's clerk; from that enlis'ed 
as a private soldier, and went abroad with his regiment. Obtain- 
ing his discharge after eight years' service, he emigrated to America 
in 1792, anil soon distinguished himself as a violent political writer, 
standing up with a characteristic love of contradiction against the 
ruling democratic faction. The extreme virulence of his abuse 
soon made the States too hot for him: after two trials for libel 
and one conviction, with sweeping damages, he returned to Eng- 
land in 1800, and commenced political writer in London under his 
American nickname "Peter Porcupine." For a short time he 
wrote on the side of the Conservatives ; but he soon quarrelled 
with them, and became, what he ever afterwards continue 1, an 
ultra-Radical. His famous paper, ' The Weekly Political Regis- 
ter,' was begun in 1802, and continued till his death. He exer- 
cised great influence upon the woiking classes, and raised intense 
hostility among tiiose opposed to his opinions : he was several 
times prosecuted for libel, and in 18 17 he had to recross the 
Atlantic to evade the pressure of a short-lived Act of Parliament, 
which he asserted to have been passed for his special annoyance. 
After several unsuccessful attempts to gain a seat in Parliament, 
he was returned for the borough of Oldham in 1832, but he lived 
only three years to enjoy his honours, and made no figure in the 
House. Besides his political writings, he composed a French 
Grammar and an English Grammar, and towar-ls the close of his 
life wrote ' Puiral Riiles' and 'Advice to Young Men.' — Cobbett 
has been called " The Last of the Saxons," and the designation 
may be allowed if the essence of the Saxon character is taken to 
be dogged, impracticable, unaccommodating energy, and indomi- 
table courage. Exceedingly impetuous, he needed only opposition 
to make his most random impulses persistent. He was a man 
destined to excite strong feelings v he: ever he went, troubling the 
political world as a strongly-charged electrical cloud troubles the 
atuiosphere. He was a great i<;ister of clear and forcible idio- 
matic English. His 'Rural Rides' expounds the homely aspects 
of English scenery with much picturesqueness and graphic neat- 
ness of touch. In his political diatribes he indulged in a licence 
of invective and abuse almost incredible to newspaper readers of 
this generation, although it was not so much above the ordinary 
heat of his time. 

A strong contrast to the pragmatic Cobbett was the amiable, 
indolent, speculative Sir James Mackintosh (1765 - 1832). A 
native of Inverness-shire, he \\as a student, along with Robert 



622 FROM 1790 TO 1820. 

Hall, at King's College, Aberleen; went to Edinburgh in 1784 
to qualify for the practice of Physic; and in 1788 set out for 
Londiin with a doctor's degree, to push his fortunes. He failed 
to establish liimself in medical practice, and was obliged to depend 
for a livelihood mainly on his literary abilities. He was first 
brought into notice by his ' Vindici;e Gallicie,' a glowing defence 
of the French llevolution against the denunciations of Burke. 
Soon after, he abandoned medicine for law, and was called to the 
bar in 1795. *In 1803 he distinguished himst-lf by his defence of 
Peltier against a prosecution for a libel on Bonaparte. In 1804 
he was appointed Recorder of Bombay. After seven years of 
"sickly vegetation" in India, he returned with an impaired con- 
stitution ; entered Parliament ; was ap[)ointed Professor of Law in 
the East India College at Haileybury ; wrote jihilosophical dis- 
sertations for the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and miscellaneous 
articles for the 'Edinburgh Beview'; and remained for twenty 
years a very acceptable member of general society. The great 
literary ambition of his life was to write the History of England: 
for this he liad accumulated many materials, but he left only a 
fragment on the Causes of the Revolution of 1688. He wrote 
also for ' Lardner's Cyclopaedia' a Life of Sir Thomas More, and 
an abridgment of English Histor}', carried down as far as the 
Reformation. Mackintosh was an amiable and able man, humor- 
ously introspective and tolerant, fond of reading and of society, 
and an observant critic both of books and of men. Easy, good- 
humoured indolence, aggravated by his residence in India, stood 
between him and durable reputation. His fame, like Dr Parr's, 
rests chiefly on perishable traditions of his conversational power : 
he had no Boswell to preserve specimens for us, and we have only 
such reports as the testimony of Sydney Smith — "His conversa- 
tion was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human 
being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with." His 
rank is not high either as a philosopher or as a historian : he was 
naturally averse to vigorous exertion, whether in reasoning or in 
research ; his authority was weakened, as he himself knew and 
admitted, by an amiable propensity to eulogistic declamation- 
Miscellaneous writing receivecf a new impulse in the early part 
of the nineteenth century by the establishment of the Reviews and 
the Magazines — namely, ' Edinburgh Review ' in 1802 ; ' Quarterly 
Review' in 1808; 'Blackwood's Magazine' in 1817; 'London 
Magazine' in 1820; and 'Westminster Review' in 1823, We 
give some account of a few of the principal writers in our con- 
cluding chai)ter. 



CHAP TEE X. 



SELECT WRITERS OF THE EARLY PART OF THIS 
CENTURY. 



THEOLOGY. 



Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., (1780-1847), is the most celebrated 
name among the preachers of the Church of Scotland. A native 
of Anstruther, in the county of Fife, he was sent at the age of 
twelve to the University of St Andrews, and was licensed to 
preach in 1799. I" 1802 he was presented to the charge of Kil- 
many in Fife. During his college course, and the first six years 
of his ministry, he seems to have held no serious views in religion j 
in fact, he seems to have entered the Church in heartless scepti- 
cism, simply as a means of securing a livelihood. His favourite 
studies were scientific. In the interval between his obtaining 
licence and his coming of age, he studied chemistry, natural 
philosophy, and moral philosophy under the Edinburgh pro- 
fessors of the time. During the winter after his presentation to 
Kilmany, he taught the mathematical class in the University as 
assistant to a superannuated professor : during the following 
winter, having quarrelled with the University authorities, he 
set up opposition lectures in the town ; and not satisfied with 
lecturing in the winter at St Andrews, he also lectured on 
chemistry to his parishioners at Kilmany during the summer. 
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Professorship of Mathe- 
matics at St Andrews, and subsequently for a similar post in 
the University of Edinburgh. He was lieutenant anl chaplain 
to a regiment of Volunteers. He published a book on ' The 
Extent and Stability of the National Resources.' Altogether 
his life was at this time most laborious and eccentric. His 
composition of the article " Christianity " for the ' Edinburgh 



624 FIJOM 1820. 

Encycloppedia ' seems to have been a turning-point in liis career. 
The death of a sister in t8o8, and a lingering ilhiess in the follow- 
ing year, are also mentioned as circuinstinces that helped to fix 
his thoughts more upon the peculiar work of the ministry. From 
about that time dates the beginning of his fame as a preacher. 
In 1815 he accepted a call to the Tron Church in Glasgow. Dur- 
ing the eight years of his ministry there, he acquired as a preacher 
and a social reformer a wider reputatioy than had ever before 
attended the labours of a minister of the Church of Scotland. 
His 'Astronomical l)iscourses' raised universal admiration; and 
when he visited London, the leading wits of the day, and notably 
Caiming and Willierforce, "formed part of his congregation wher- 
ever he preached, and vied with one another in their anxiety to do 
liini honour in society." His •Commercial Discourses ' also had 
an enormous circulation. As a social reformer he was known by 
his advocacy of j\Ialthusianism, his extraordinary energy in organ- 
ising the voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor, and his 
personal efforts to "excavate the practical heathenism of our large 
cities." In 1823 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy 
in St Andrews; in 1827 declined an ofier of a chair of Moral 
Philosophy in University College, London; and in 1828 accepted 
a Divinity Professorship in Edinburgh. The first extra official 
work of his professorial life was a continuation of papers on the 
' Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns,' begun before he 
left Glasgow : this was soon followed in the same direction by a 
course of lectures on Political Economy, which, when published in 
1832, were highly praised by the authorities in that subject. He 
also published his lectures on Natural Theology and on Christian 
Evidences, and wrote the Bridge water Treatise on "the adapta- 
tion of the world to the mental constitution of man." In addition 
to his professorial and literary labours, he played a prominent i)art 
in the Courts of the Church : he was particularly distinguished by 
his schemes for Church extension, and by the lead that he took in 
the controversies terminating in the Disrui)tion. He was chosen 
by acclamation Moderator of the first Free Church Assembly, and 
spent his latter years as Principal of the Free Church College 
in Edinburgh. He had no small influence in raising and establish- 
ing what is known as the Sustentation Fund. His collected works 
fill thirty-four duodecimo volumes. 

We have mentioned his extraordinary fame as a preacher. His 
appearance is described as being by no means prepossessing; he 
had a hard voice and a broad pronunciation ; his gestures were 
uncouth ; and, unlike Robert Hall, he brought a written sermon 
to the pulpit, and confined his eyes to the manuscript. The 
charm seems to have lain in his fervid nervous energy. The 
hearers were laid hold of by his extraordinary concentrated em- 



JAMES MILL. 525 

phasis and graphic expression, and hrouglit almost mesmerically 
under liis influence. As an author, he is distinguished more for 
his statement of the views of otliers than for the excogitation of 
anything profoundly original. It may with confidence be pro- 
nounced that he had a greater genius for exposition than any 
other Scotchman of this century except Carlyle.^ We cannot read 
a page of Clhalmers without feeling ourselves in the hand of a 
master of luminous and varied exposition. Himself possessing 
the clearest grasp of his subject, he fully comprehended and 
kept steadily in view the difficulties of the reader : he sought to 
unfold his matter in the most luminous sequence, and to make 
sure that one point was thoroughly expounded before he pro- 
ceeded to the next. He insisted upon being vividly understood. 
His habit of persistent repetition, of turning over each proposition 
and presenting it in many different shapes, is the most remarkable 
feature in his style. Robert Hall is reported to have dwelt upon 
this in conversation : " He often reiterates the same thing ten or 
twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Rurke himself 
had not so much of that peculiarity, his mind lesembles . . . 
a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and 
beautiful form ; but the object presented is still the same. . . . 
He may be said to indulge in this repetition to a faulty excess. 
His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is 
incessant motion, but no jirogress. AVhen he was at Leicester, 
he preached a most admirable sermon, on the necessity of immedi- 
ate repentance ; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these 
his mind revolved as on a pivot." Whether Chalmers carries 
repetition to excess is matter of opinion : in a popular expositor 
excessive repetition is an error upon the right side. It is incorrect 
to say that there is no progress in his expositions ; there is pro- 
gress, but it is slow and thorough. 

HISTORY. 

In 1817-18 was published the 'History of Rritish India,* by 
James Mill (1773-1836), celebrated afterwards as a writer on 
psychology, ethics, and sociology. "An ampler title to distinction 
in history and philosophy," writes the late Mr Grote, " can seldom 
be produced than that which Mr James Mill left behind him. We 
know no work which surpasses his 'History of Rritish India' 
in the main excellences attainable by historical writers : indus- 
trious accumulation, continued for many years, of original author- 
ities — careful and conscientious criticism of their statements, and 

1 It is rather a remarkaMe fact that both these men in their younger days 
were distinguished as mathematicians. Such combinatious of high scientific 
■with the highest literary ajititude are rare. 



526 FROM 1820. 

a large command of psychological analysis, enaV)ling the author to 
interpret phenomena of society, both extremely complicated and 
far removed from his own personal exjierience." Born in Kin- 
cardineshire, not far from the birthplace of Thomas Eeid, Mill 
was educated after a fashion and with a purpose very common 
in Scotland : he was sent to the school of his native parish, Logie- 
Pert ; to the gramm;ir-school of the nearest town, Montrose; and 
to the University of Edinburgh; and he was destined to the 
ministry of the Kirk. But after receiving licence as a preacher, 
he relinquished his intended profession, and took, al)Out the 
beginning of this century, a step that Jeffrey about the same 
time had thoughts of taking — went to London, and settled there 
as, to use Jeffrey's expression, a literary " grub." He became 
editor of the 'Literary Journal,' a sh'irt-lived adv nture, and 
wrote for the 'Eclectic Review,' the 'Edinburgh Keview,' and 
other periodicals. He made the acquaintance of Jeremy Ben- 
tham, and for a number of years he and his family lived during 
the summer in Bentham's country-house. His 'History of British 
India' was commenced in 1806. In 1819, the year after the pub- 
lication of this work, he was offered the high po.st of Assistant- 
Examiner of Correspondence in the India House, in which he was 
ultimately chief Examiner, an office nearly equivalent to the 
Under-Secretaryship of State for Indian Affairs. Shortly after his 
appointment to the India House he contributed to the 'Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica' the articles on Government, Jurisprudence, 
Liberty of the Press, Prison Disci] jline. Colonies, Law of Nations, 
and Education. He was (me of the jirincipal contributors to the 
'Westminster Review,' which was founded in 1823. His chief 
works on more abstruse subjects are — ' Elements of Political 
Economy,' 1821-22; 'Analysis of the Human Mind,' 1829 ; and 
•Fnigments on Mackintosh,' 1835. — Mill was endowed with 
eminent powers of expression and illustration. Bentham judged 
rightly in helping him on as a promising expositor of utilitarian 
principles. His strength, however, lay more in the logical, scientific 
faculty : men were drawn to his books more by the severe and 
penetrating rationality of the matter than by the attractions 
of the style. The severity of his style was probably deepened 
by a lurking cynicism that on several occasions made itself 
disagreeably conspicuous : a man of clear in.sight and intense 
reserved disposition, he had something like a passionate hatred 
of superficial knowledge and gushing sentimentality, and he 
opposed the philosophy of Sir James Mackintosh and the ami- 
able Hindu extravagance of Sir William Jones with too much 
asperity, and in the case of Jones with some disadvantage 
to the truth. His style possesses very little figurative orna- 
ment ; it aims at brief and clear expression as the main chance ; 



HENRV MALL AM. 527 

and its principal clianns are the severe charms of senteiitiong 
iiK'i>iveni'SS and occasional strokes of epigrammatic pnint. His 
'Encyclopaedia' essays have always been exceedingly popular 
among liard-licaded people: they have none of the softer graces 
of style, but, they are almost unrivalled as efforts at the concise 
application of general princijiles to practical life ; and, in addition 
to tlieir '"pithy" character, their constant endeavour to give the 
pith of the matter in the briefest ] ossiUle statement, they contain 
sharp stimulating touches of epigram and of cynical paradox. 
Macaulay's criticism that " his arguments ate stated w itli the 
utmost affectation of precision, his divisions are awfully foimal, 
and his style is generally as dry as that of Euclid's elements," is, 
like ton many of Macaulay's criticisms, an extreme caricature. 
The main defect in these essays is pdintod out by the author's 
son, Mr John Stuart Mill, in the chajiter on the "Geometrical 
nietho I of reasoning in Politics" (J^ogic, ii. 471). The 'History 
of lU'itish India' is a perspicuous, well-ananged narrative, written 
without much pretence to fine composiiion. As in his essays, the 
style is enlivened chiefly by epigrammatic turns, succinct maxims, 
and sharp cynical criticisms. The value of the work consists 
mainly in its clear analysis of institutions, and its reviews of legal 
and political transactions by the light of general principles.' Con- 
cerning Mill's other principal works we quote the opinion of Mr 
Groie: " Mr James Mill's 'Elements of Political Economy' were, 
at the time when they apjieared, the most logical and condensed 
exjjosition of the entire science then existing. Lastly, his latest 
avowed production, the ' Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human 
Mind,' is a model of perspicuous exposition of complex states of 
consciousness, carried faither than by any other author before him." 
Henry Hallam (1777-1859) is the author of three ceh brated 
historical works. The son of a dignitary of the English Church, 
he received his education at Eton and Oxford, and afterwar 's 
studied law in the Inner Temple; but possessing some [irivate 
fortune, ami holding besides a (Joverment sinecure, he was in. e- 
pendent of professional emolument, and devoted himself to litera- 
ture. He attached himself to the ^Vllig party, wrote for the 
'Edinburgh Ileview,' took an active part in the Anti slavery 

1 Its value wa'=! nmich increased some tweiit)' years ac;o liy tlie annotations of 
Mr Wilson, Bodeu Prufessor of Sanscrit in Oxiord, who followed Mill btep liy 
step over tlie tidd with a snperior knowleiige of Hindu literature. It a]ipears 
that Mill, while his work is fully entitled to the praise of extensive reseaicli, was 
somewhat iirejudiced against the Hindus liy his antipathy to what he considered 
the overestimate of them formed by Sir William Jones. Mr Wilson not only 
corrects Mill's errors in matters of fact, but pursues him throughout with a sharp 
criticism of his conclusions regarding men and measures ; and while he cannot 
be said to siiow the same supenoiiiy in judgment thnt he shows in scholarship, 
the caustic criticising of the critic forms an interesting l>y-p!ay in the perusal of 
the book. Mr Wilson also continues the history up to liis own time. 



528 FROM 1820. 

agitation, and was united with Brougham, Ma,ckintosh, Russell, 
Althorp, and other notaldlities of liis party, in tlie e.--tallislinient 
of the Society for tlie Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. His ' View 
of the 8tate of Europe during the Middle Ages,' pionouuced by 
foreign critics to be "beyond contradiction" tlie best of his works, 
Avas published in 1818; his ' Constitutional Histoiy of England' 
in 1827 ; his 'Introduction to the Literature of Europe during the 
15th, i6th, and 17th Centuries,' in 1838-39. In 1830 George IV. 
instituted two gold medals for the best historical works of his 
reign : and ilallam and Washington Irving were the historians 
that his iMajesty delighted to honour. Hallam's works are praised 
for industrious research and dignified impartiality ; his Constitu- 
tional History is accepted as the standard work on that subject. 
He had great reputation' as a scholar; Byron calls him "classic 
Hailam much renowned for Greek:" but it may be doubted 
whether his introduction to the Literature of E^urope was not too 
ambitious a work for any one man not ))ossessed of the resources of 
Faust. Certainly his ciiticisms of English writers, though always 
expressed with elegance, will not always bear close examination, 
and too often give evi ence of very superficial and second-hand 
knowledge.' Ornate, dignified elegance is the characteristic of 
his style: for popular purposes it is ]>erhai)s too Latinised. 

Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., the historian of Modern Emope, 
bom December 29, 1792, was the son of tlie Bev. Archibald 
Alison, author of the ' Essay on Taste,' who, at the time of his 
birth, was vicar of Kenley in Shropshire. His father removing to 
Edinburgh when he was five years old, he received his school and 
university education there, and became, in 1814, an advocate at 
the Scotch bar. He was at Paris in 1814, "when Talma played 
before a pitful of kings ; " and there conceived the idea of record- 
ing from its first beginnings the stirring series of events that 
was supposed to have terminate! in the meeting of the Allied 
sovereigns. The prosecution of this idea cost him "fifteen sub- 
sequent years of travel and study, and fifteen more of composi- 
tion ; " the first instalment of his ' History of Europe from 1789 to 
the Restoratioji of the Bourbons in 1815' making its appearance 
in 1833, ""f^ ^'^^^ concluding volumes in 1844. iMeantime this was 
far from being his sole occupation : he published ' Princii)les of the 
Criminal Law of Scotland' in 1832, and 'Practice of the Criminal 
Law' in 1833; and from 1834 he discharged the duties of the 
sheriffdom of Lanarkshire. He was a frequent contributor to 
'Blackwood's Mai^azine' ; a selection of his contributions in three 
volumes was published in 1850. He wrote also 'Principles of 
Population,' 1840; ' Free Trade and Protection,' 1844; 'England 
in 1815 and in 1845 ' ; 'Life of the Duke of lAIarlboiough,' 1847. 
1 For example see ji. 213 of this work. 



SIR ARCHIBALD ALTS OX. 529 

In the latter years of his busy life he continue<l his TTis^orj' to the 
accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852 ; the successive volumes 
appearing between 1852 and 1859. He was created a baronet by 
Lord Derby's Ministry in 1852. His death took place on the 23d 
of May 1867. — Sir Archibald was in politics an extreme Conserva- 
tive : he remained an uncompromising opi)Oi:ent to the i)rinciple3 
of Free Trade, and he never ceased to repiesent the Reform Bill of 
1832 as inaugurating an era of disorganisation and decay. Two 
of his opinions in particidar have been subjected to much criticism: 
one that crime is increased rather than diminished by merely 
intellectual education — a doctrine inculcated also by Augusts 
C()n)te, and which presents a consideraMe field for casuistry ; and 
the other relating to the amount of harm done to British com- 
mercial interests by the return to a meta'lic currency after the 
conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. His peculiar views are .stron^Iy 
enounced in the later continuation of his History. But, as ia 
admitted by the sharpest critics of this work, his Toryism and hi.s 
crotchets are not allowed to interfere with the fairness and candour 
of his narrative, or with his estimates of political opponents. The 
' Edinburgh Review' credits him with "an entire freedom from all 
mean and pe!ty jealousies or rancorous sentiments towards hia 
anfagonists ;" and affirms that "he has a generous and hearty 
appreciation of all merit which he perceives, and can bestow 
praise in no stinted measure even on those most op[»osed to him." 
In addition to this, one of the first reijuisites for the supremely 
difficult task of writing contemporary history. Sir Archibald dis- 
played the greatest industry in collecting materials for his work; 
all agree in bearing testimony to rhe thoroughness of his researches. 
Very little exception has been taken to the accuracy of his facts, 
as regards either omission or positive error — less than has been 
taken in the case of Macaulay's 'History of England'; adverse 
critics have confined themselves principally to his opinions. His 
s'yle has been exposed to considerable animadversions : gram- 
marians have cited from his pages numerous violations of granmiar, 
and the 'Edinburgh Review' charges him with verbosity, and with 
excessive pomp in the enunciation of his general reflections. These, 
however, are faults that occur chiefly to the critic and the cynic ; 
and the critics of Sir ArchiWald's style do not appear to have 
suflSciently accounted for the extraordinary world-wide popularity 
of the work. The ' History of Europe,' widely circulated at home, 
has been translated into all European languages, and also into 
Arabic and Hindustani : in a work designed for general reading, 
such popularity may be taken as a proof of excellence, unless good 
reasons can be assigned to the contrary. The intrinsic interest of 
the events narrated, absorbing as that undoubtedly was, and the 
author's industrious accuracy, great as that was, do nut cuuslitute 

2 L 



530 FROM 1820. 

a sufficient exiilanation ; tlie interesting story is undeniably told 
with high narrative skill. When we disregard minute errors of 
s ructiire, and lot>k to geueial eU'ects, we find many excellences of 
style that help to explain his popularity. The historian possesses 
a Howing command of .siini»le an 1 .striking language, always equal 
to the dignity and spirit of the events related, and enlivened by 
happy turns of antithesis and ei)igram. He had a feeling for 
dramatic contrasts, and introduces them with striking effect. He 
visited the scenes of all the important engagements, and his de- 
scrii)tions have the freshness and animation of pictures drawn from 
nature. Finally, what is of prime importance in such a work, 
though he deals with highly complicate I affairs involving the 
interaction of several different powers, he keeps the concurring 
streams of events lucidly distinct, and brings tlie reader without 
])er])lexity to their joint conclusion. His explanatory episodes are 
peculiarly elaborate and luminous. In short, it has heen well said 
tliat " if the art of engaging the reader's attention, and sustaining 
it by the vigour, spirit, and vivacity of the narrative be a high 
nuTit, many '>'tpular and many great historians must cede superi- 
ority of this Kind to Sir Archibald Alison." 

PHILOSOPHY. 

Sir William Hamilton, Bart. (1788-1856), the greatest British 
supporter of a priori philosophy in this century, was the son of Dr 
W. Hamilton, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Glasgow. 
He was the lineal representative and was adjudged heir to the title 
of Sir Robert Hamilton, the leader of the Covenanting forces at 
Drumclog. His father died when he was two years old. He re- 
ceived his .schooling partly at home, i)artly at the public schools of 
Glasgow, and partly at jtrivate schools in England. He passed 
througii the curriculum of Arts in Glasgow, and spent a winter at 
Edin urgh in the study of medicine, which he was inclined to 
make his profession. In 1807 he went to Oxford as an exhibitioner 
on I lie Sncll Foundation. There he became engrossed in the study 
of mental iihiliiso[>hy, and in the final examination professed a 
knowledge of an unusual (though currently very much exaggeratetl) 
list of books, and was passed with the highest distinction. About 
this time he abandoned his design of enJering the profession of 
medicine, and ultimately settled at Edinburgh as a lawyer, being 
called to the bar in 1814, three years after his graduation as B.A. 
at, Oxford. In 1S20 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 
Chair of Moral Philosojihy, vacated by the death of Brown, the 
appointment being given to John Wilson. In the following year 
he was appointed to the ]»onrly-saIaried Chair of Civil History. 
His appointment to the Chair of Logic did not take place till 1836. 



SIH WJLLIAM HAMILTON. 5ol 

By this time, through articles contributed to the ' rdinburgh Re- 
view,' ami subsequently reprinted umiei- the title of ' Dissercationa 
and Discussions in PhiiOSophy,' lie had obtained Luropi an reputa- 
tion as a philosopher. In 1844 his health was miu h shattered by 
an attack of i)aralysis of the right side, which, while it left his mind 
uninjured, permanently disalJed tlie side ati'eited, impaiiing his 
eyesight and liis speech, and leaving him with an inii)erfect use of 
his right arm and right leg. " He had so far recovered frnni his 
illness in the winter of 1844-45 '"^^ ^^ ''^ ^^^^ *" resume his studies, 
and he continued the work of reading and thinking with but slight 
interruptions till a few days before his death in May 1856. The 
editing of Reid, which had suftered so much from interruptions, 
was resumed. The work was finally published — though without 
being completed — in November 1846. The suiip!ementary disser- 
tations D* * and D* * * had been written before Ins illness." His 
class lectures on logic and Metaphysics were published after his 
death, under the editorial charge of the late Dean Mansel and Pro- 
fessor Veitch, his pujjils.^ — In his youth Hamilton was a very 
handsome, athletic man. He is described by Carlyle as having 
"a fine iirm figure of middle height; one of the finest cheerfnlly- 
serious human faces, of square, solid, and yet ratlier aquiline type; 
and a pair of the beautifullest kindly- btaniing hazel eyes, well 
open, and every now and then with a lambency of smiling fire in 
them, which I always remember as if with trust and gratitude." 
" He was finely social and human in these walks or interviews. 
His talk was forcible, copious, discursive, carehss rather than 
otherwise ; and on abstruse toi)ics, I observed, was api to become 
embroiled and revelly, much less perspicuous and elucidative than 
with a little deliberation he could have made-ir. . . . By 
lucid questioning you could get lucidity from him on any topic." 
In company he had no pretensions to shine as a talker, and list- 
ened quietly without showing any disposition to strike in, unless 
he had a special interest in the subject, when he became animated 
and fluent. " He did not accommodate himself to the jjievailing 
■opinions of the comiiany; but rather took delight in running atilt 
against them in a good-humoured way. He had great pleasure in 
stating and defending some i)aradox or startling o[)inion (of which 
he would perhaps afterwards make a joke), not because it exactly 
represented his own opinion, but sometimes merely for the sake of 
argument, and more frequently with the wish to u]thold the un- 
popular side of a question under discussion."^ "The prevailing 
opinion on a subject, when strongly put, had a tendency to arouse 
in him a feeling of opposition." "As in intellect he was critical, 
so in temperament he was strongly jjolemicd, even fimling a cer- 
taiii enjoyment in conflict for its o mi sake" "His views on 
1 Trofessor Veitch's Memoir of Sir William liamilton, p. H2. 



533 FROM 1820. 

University matters brought liim pretty frequently into slinrp colli- 
sion with some of his colleiigiies. For with all his lovableuess, 
even tenderness of nature, Hamilton was yet a man of resolute 
will, and high and somewhat nncnmj)ron)ising temper." From the 
time of his extraordinary examination at Oxford, his erudition 
and encyclopedic reading became a subject of wonder and exagger- 
ated rumour. He seems to have had something of the same book- 
devouring turn as Johnson. Johnson is dcscrilied as " tearing oi;t 
the heart " of a book, and Sir William, in a coarser niddification 
of the phrase, as " tearing out the entrails " — expressions that 
point to the same habit of glancing at the table of contents, the 
index, or the marginal annotations, and reading only what one 
happens to be interested in. The two men agreed further in 
combining with this literary epicureanism (or rather gkittony) a 
reluctance to cnmpnse ; but H;iniilton, who had a decided mechani- 
cal turn, preserved the results of his reading in iin elaborately 
ingenious commonplace-book,' whereas Johnson left what he read 
to the chances of resuscitation by his powerful memory. Of late 
years both the extent and the accuracy of Hamilton's scholarship 
have been questioned, but with all deductions he still remains 
Aviiat he was represented to De Quincey as being — "a mun.-ter of 
erudition." — We do not here a' tempt any outline of his philoso- 
phy; and his ])hilos()phical abilities are still matter of dispute. — 
As regards style, he had, with his prodigious memory, a fine com- 
mand of language ; his command of the language of controversy, 
especially for the purpose of summarily " putting down " an an- 
tagonist, is at least as good as his comm:ind of the language of 
jihilosophical exposition. In both o[)erations he is masterly. He 
had a taste for antithesis and pithy conn)ression. He was also 
notably studious of method, of good arrangement ; more, a])par- 
ently, from a love of mechanical symmetry, than from any lively 
sympathy with the difficulties of the reader. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), the chief of the originators of the 
'Edinburgh lleview,' was the son of a depute-clerk of the Court 
of Session, and received his early education at the Edinburgh 
High Sch<pol. He pursued university studies partly at Glasgow, 
partly at Oxford, and partly at Edinburgh, exercising himself all 
the while voluminously in English composition. At Oxford he 
remained only nine months, and left with a sense of relief, finding 
the routine sul)jects of SMidy very uncongenial. He was called to 
the lulinburgh bar in 1794. Entertaining the then unpopular prin- 
ciples of the U hig party, his caieer was for several years the re- 

1 Professor Veitch's Memoir of Sir William llaiiiilton, y. 38J. 



FRANCIS jeffi;p:y. 533 

verse of proaperous, and more than once lie had serious thoughts 
of abandoning the profession. The estal)Iishment of the 'Edin- 
burgh Review' in 1802 was the making of his fame and fortune. 
" Without patronage, witliout name, under the tutelage of no 
great man; propounding heresies of all sorts against the ruling 
fancies of the day, whether [)olitical, poetical, or social ; by sheer 
vigour of mind, resolution of purpose, and an unexampled com- 
bination of mental qualities — five or six young men in our some- 
what provincial metropolis laid the foundation of an empire to 
■which, in the course of a few years, the intellect of Europe did 
homage." The sociable and clear-sighted Jeffrey was admirably 
fitted to keep together and direct the energies of this fortuitous 
concourse of unemployed talent. His fame grew with the fame 
of the work. He rose rapidly to a first-rate position at the bar. 
His election to the Piectorship of Glasgow University in 1820 was 
a proof of the general admiration of his powers. His electinn as 
Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1829 was a proof that he 
enjoyed the liighest popularity among his brother lawyers. From 
1830, for about three years and a half, he held office in the Whig 
Ministry as Lord Advocate. In 1833 ''^ ^^'^^ appointed one of the 
Judges of the Court of Session, and lived in the quiet discharge 
of his judicial duties and the pleasant society of " Modern Athens " 
until his seventy-seventh year, when he died, after a brief illness, 
on the 26th of January 1850.' — Jefl'rey was a dark, wiry, little 
creature, with small mobile features, black sparkling eyes, and a 
remarkably long, narrow head. His voice was higli-pitched, his 
speech somewhat mincing, and his movements exceedingly ani- 
mated. "Jeftrey's maimer," wrote his friend Horner, "almost 
irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and super- 
ficial talents." His ap[iearance, however, did not do him justice. 
" He has indeed a very sportive and playful fancy, but it is accom- 
panied with an extensive and varied information, with a readiness 

^ Tlie following is his own account of his connection with the 'Edinburgh 
Review': "I wrote the tirst article in the tirst nuiiiber of the Review in Oc- 
tolier 1802, and sent my last contribution to it in October 1840 ! It is a long 
period to have persevered in well — or in ill doing ! But I was by no means 
ecjually alert in the service during all the intermediate time. I was sole editor 
from 1803 till late in 1829; and during that jieriod was no doubt a large and 
regular contributor. In that last year, however, I received the great honour of 
being elected, by my brethren of the bar, to the office of Dean of the Faculty of 
Advocates ; when it immediately occurred to nie that it was not quite fitting 
that the otticial liead of a great Law Corporation should continue to be the con- 
ductor of what might be fairly enough rejireseiited as, in many respects, a party 
journal ; and I consequently withdrew at once and altogether from the manage- 
ment. ... I wrote nothing for it for a considerable time subsequent to 
1829 ; and during the whole fourteen years that have since elapsed, have sent in 
all but four papers to that work, none of them on political subjects. 1 ceased 
in reality to be a contributor in 1829." — Preface to the collected edition of hi* 
CLiiiti'iluLions to the ' Eaiithunjh lievUw,' 1843. 



534 FROM 1S2(). 

of apprehension almost intuitive, with judicious and calm discern- 
ment, with a ])rofound and i)enetrating understanding." To this 
it must l)e added, tliat the range of his apprehension, discernment, 
or penetration was not of the widest order : a man of great activity 
and decision, with much knowledge of the world, and skill in the 
management of men, he yet did not display, at least in literature, 
the hii;hest power of entering into the feelings of others, of under- 
standing the position of men very different in character from him- 
self. In his criticisms of Wordsworth we see vividly at once his 
own character and his failure to jippreciate a character very differ- 
ent from his own. He was an affectionate man, intensely attached 
to his friends, and uncontrollably foud of their society ; and the 
passages that he admires in Wordsworth are chiefly passages <if 
tenderness. He loved natural scenery, too, in a way, and does 
justice to Wordsworth's more striking word-pictures; but he was 
toD much attached to "the busy haunts of iiien" to follow the 
raptures of a genuine nature -woishipper, and he found Words- 
worth's minute descriptions intolerably tedious. But what he 
chiefly failed to understand, and what chiefly offended him, were 
the meditations natural to a recluse, and the glorification of chil- 
dren and of country personages to a degree altogether out of keej)- 
ing with their conventional jilace in the social scale. He was 
constantly accusing Wordsworth of clothing the commonest com- 
mon[)laces with unintelligible verbiage, and of debasing tenderness 
with vulgarity. A similar narrowness, the same tendency to lay 
down the law without a suspicion that other people Avere differently 
constituted from himself, appears in his essay on 'Beauty.' Him- 
self defective in the feeling for colour, he denies that colour pos- 
sesses any intrinsic beauty, and is utterly sceptical regarling the 
statements of artists and connoisseurs, suspecting them of pedantry 
and jargon. His style is forcible and copious, without any pre- 
tence to finished or elegant structure. His diction is perhaps too 
overflowing; his powers of ampliflcation and illustration some- 
times ran away with him; "his memory," says Lockhart, "a]> 
peared to range the dictionary from A to Z, and he had not tlie 
self-denial to sjiare his readers the redundance which delighted 
himself." His collected works give but a feeble idea of the clever- 
ness of his ridicule ; he refused to republish the most striking 
specimens of his satirical skill. 

Conjoineci with Jeffrey in the origination of the 'Edinburgh 
Review ' was the Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845), the most biil- 
liant wit of his generation. The son of an eccentric I^'inglish 
gentleman, he was educated at Winchester and at Oxford, and 
then set adrift to push his own fortunes. He wished to study for 
the bar, but was under ihe n^ecessity of entering the Church. For 
three years he acted as curate in a small village in the midst of 



SYDNEY SMJTII. 535 

Sali>-bury Plain. In 1797, being appninted travelling tutor to the 
son of the parish squire, he set out with his pupil for the Univer- 
sity of Weimar, but was forced by the political storm tlien raging 
on the Continent to put into Edinburgh. Here he found a conge- 
nial group of as[)iring young men, most of them fortuneless like 
himself, and linked together by agreement in unpo[)nlar political 
views : among these, some four or five years after his arrival, he 
suggested the idea of a quarterly periodical as a vent for their 
oinnions and their ambition, and himself took a leading jiart in 
writing and in choosing articles for the first number of the 'Edin- 
burgh Review.' He contril)uted to this periodical for a quarter 
of a century, until he became a dignitary of the Church ; and his 
strong sense and wit are justly credited with a large share of its 
]iopnlarity. In 1804-5-6 he lectured at the Royal Institution on 
Moral I'hilosophy. V^ery slender recognition was given to his 
j)owers and his connection with the rising ^^ lag Review : a'though 
his political friends were then in office, he had to acce])t the small 
living of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire ; and even it was obtained 
with some difficulty. There he remained for twenty-two years. 
In 1828 he was presented by Lord Lyndhurst, a Conservative, to 
the cauonry of l>ristol Catliedral, and from that time ceased to 
write for the ' Edinburgh Review.' '1 hrough the influence of the 
same nobleman he was eualiled to exchange Foston for the living 
of Combe Florey, near Taunton. All that his Whig friends did for 
him was to make him a prebeu'iary of St Paul's : this piece of pro- 
motion he received in 1831. His case is sometimes mentioned along 
■wiih Swift's as an example of political ingratitude; the excuse for 
not making him a bishop was that his writings were generally re- 
garded as being inconsistent with clerical decorum. He died on 
the 2 2d of February 1845. Like De Quincey, Jeffrey, Wilson, and 
many otlier less distinguished contributors to periodical literature, 
he has left no great work as a pre-eminent monument of his genius; 
his Peter Plymley's " Letters on the subject of the Catholics," which 
appeared in 1808, are his most elaborate efl'orts on any one subject, 
and they do not extend beyond fifty closely-printed octavo pages. 
It is perhaj^s a vain regret to wish that his powers had been sjient 
upon sustamed compositions of greater length ; he wiote briefly 
ui)on questions of passing interest with extraordinary immediate 
effect ; he inliuenced as well as gratified his contemporaries ; and 
now that his objects have been attained and the interest of his 
themes has been succeeded by other interests, the lovers of wit are 
as much entertained by his short effusions as they would have been 
by more ambitious performances. — Both physically and mentally 
Sydney Smith l-eloiiged to the lace of giants. He was a man of a 
large build, and of a constitution tl at retained to his latest years 
a hearty enjoyment of life. His wit and great convivial powers 



536 FROM 1820. 

did not prevent him from making more solid attainments : tliou.,^h 
not by any means a profound scholar, or a logician of scholastic 
subtlety, he did not disdain to master the dry facts of what he 
professed to discuss ; and he argued with strong good sense: his 
papers on political questions are instructive and convincing, as well 
as witty. " He never came into society without naturally and easily 
taking the lead as, beyond all question, the most agreeable, sensible, 
and instructive guest and com[»anion that the oldest person living 
could remember." His straitened means and the enforced solitude 
of country life were doubtless etticacious in giving earnestness and 
solidity to his character; had genial company been always within 
his reach, he would probably now have been known only as a con- 
vivial spirit of happy memory. Regarding the mechanical part of 
his style, Mr Hay ward ' makes the folli>wing criticism : " His ser- 
mons, which are mostly free from mannerism, prove that he could 
combine purity and correctness with force of language when he 
thouglit fit But his humorous writings are often deficient in ease, 
smoothness, grace, rhythm, and purity, because he constantly aimed 
at effect by startling contrasts, by the juxtapositiou of inc(mgruous 
images or epithets, or by the use of odd sounding words and strange 
compounds of Greek and Latin deiivation. Thus he describes a 
preacher wiping his face with his cambric ' sudariu7n,' and asks, 
'why this hnloplexia on sacred occasions alone 1' A weak and 
foolish man is 'anserous' and ' asinine.' Dr Parr's wig is the ixiya 
dav/xa of barbers," &c. On these defects in his composition it 
would be easy to insist too much ; they are part and parcel of the 
pervading quality of his style. He takes rank among our greatest 
masters of tlie ludicrous. He has been surpassed as a wit, sur- 
l)assed as a humorist, surpassed as a satirist ; but taken all in all, 
both in Ids writings and in private society, he probably never has 
been surpassed in the power of exciting hearty laughter. In pri- 
vate company he seems to have been irresistible; the more so that 
" theie was always plenty of bread to his sack ; tlie coruscations 
of bis humour were relieved not by flashes of silence, but by the 
moonlight beams of good feeling and good sense." With his un- 
failing buoyancy of spirits, he could keep up the flow of wit and 
clever nonsense long after men of ordinary constitution would 
have been exhausted ; out of the mere wealth of his constitution 
he could do what was impossible for Theodore Hook without an 
extreme use of stinudauts. His style has something of the reported 
character of his conversation; mixed up with the "infinite hu- 
mour," we have clear statement of pertinent facts and sound argu- 
ments. We are not conscious of any awkwardness of transition 
fiom the comic to the serious ; he usually writes with a serious 
purpose — with the object of discrediting, both by reason and by 
* Biographical and Critical Essays, i. 50 



CHARLES LAMB. 537 

ridicnlo, something that he disap[iroves of. He is often humorous, 
purely for the sake of the humnur, but his prevailing purposes are 
sei ious. ^Yhat is more, he did not, like the ' Spectator,' the ' Ram- 
bler,' and the ' Citizen of the World,' attack ignorance, folly, bigotry, 
and vice with inoffensive generality, directing his ridicule against 
imaginary types ; but he openly assailed and turned to scorn living 
men, and laws, jjarties, and institutions that were in actual exist- 
ence. He was lar from surveying mankind with the aitistic im- 
partiality of Goldsmith ; he used his wit unmercifully on the side 
of a party; he was one of the most aggressive of the Edinburgh 
Reviewers. Anti revolutionary alarmists, the upholders of Catholic 
disabilities, fanatical Methodists, Indian missionaries, the abuse of 
classical study, female education, public schools, the Game-laws, 
the Poor-laws, the state of prisons, the cruel treatment of untried 
prisoners — these and suchlike were the objects of his witty satire 
and liumorous deiision. Although a good-natured man, without a 
trace of the sourness and fierceness of Swift, and now recognised as 
having used his powers in the main on the side of good sense and 
good feeling, he was most provokingly and audaciously personal 
in his strictures. This point must be especially attended to in 
an estimate of Sydney Smith as a master of the ludicrous; the 
mere fact of overt personality distinguishes him from all our great 
humorists or satirists except Swift, and he is distinguished from 
Swift by his greater heai-tiness of nature. He is too complacent, 
too abonndingly self-satisfied, too buoyantly full of spirits, to hate 
anyliody ; but lie burlestjues them, derides them, and abuses them 
with the most exasperating effrontery — in a way that is great fun 
to the reader, but exquisite torture to the victim. For short char- 
acteristic specimens we may refer to his review of Dr Langford's 
sermon, an- 1 his Letters on the American Debts. 

A humourist of a much less robust and boisterous type than 
Sydney Smith, a humourist in a more restricted sense of the word, 
was the author of the ' Essays of Elia,' Charles Lamb (1775-1834). 
The son of a lawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple, he was, along 
with Coleiidge, a scholar on the foundation of Christ's Hospital, 
went from that to the South Sea House, and in 1792 obtained an 
appointment in the India House, where he lemaine 1 for thirty-three 
years. While his public life was thus imeventfal, the course of his 
domestic life was altered and saddened by a well-known tragical 
calamity, the result of an outbreak of insanity in his only sister. 
This took i»lace in 1796. "For a time Mary was confined in an 
asylum ; but, the fit passing off, she was released, on her brother 
giving a solemn undertaking to watch over her through life. 
. . . For the sake of his sister, he gave up the brighter pro- 
spects of life, . . . abandoning, it is thought, a passion he 
had conceived for a young lady who is ap[)arently alluded to in hia 



/ 



538 FliO.M 1S20, 

Ess.iys Tinder the designation of 'Alice W.' 'I'lie history of the 
long association between brother and sister, brnkcn fioiii time to 
time by a fresh accessinn of the fatal malady, is ()ne of the most 
touching things in fact or fiction." Lamb's fiist ap^jearance as an 
author was in 1798; in that year ''Charles Lloyd and Charles 
1 amb " published 'Blank Verse.' In the same your appeared hia 
prose talc of ' Ilosamond Gray'; in 1801 his tragedy of 'Jolm 
Woodvil,' an imitation of the Elizabethan style, which wiis merci- 
h'ssly ridiculed by the Edinburgh Reviewers. Shortly afterwards 
ho wro'e a farce, which also proved a failure. In 1807 he pid> 
iished his ' Tales from Shakspeare,' written in conjunction witli his 
sister. He made several contributinns to Leigh Hunt's ' Ketiector.' 
The pajjers that established his reputation with the pu 'lie were 
his 'Essays of Elia,' which originally appeared in the 'London 
Magazine,' and were reprinted in a collected form in 1823. In 
1825 he retired from his clerkship with a handsome pension. He 
gives a very humorous account of his sensations on thus obtain- 
ing liberty from the routine of the desk, and of the unhappi- 
ness tliat soon overtook him from his having nothing to do. 
He lived through nine years of his uneasy leisure, occasionally 
•writing verses and periodical articles, but adding little to his 
literary reputation. His sister Mary survived till 1847 ; but 
after his death her lunacy returned, and she had to be placed 
under restraint. — Lamb was a very different man from the robust, 
liearty, buoyant Sydney Smith : a spare, slender ]ierson, of ex- 
tremely excitable nervous temperaiueiit, of shy melancholy air, y- 
his humour not an outcome of healthy animal spirits, but a ijro- 
vision of the fancy to make up for the poverty of the constitu- 
tional sources of pleasure. He had a tinue of the insanity that 
was developed in his sister; a melancholy capricious turn; an 
excitability tliat might easily have been pushed beyond the limits 
of self-control. Two or three glasses of wine excited him; and, 
once excited, he carried (mt the most comical whims with an utter 
recklessness of consequences and appearances. Shy in general 
society, he was a man of warm and deep affections, as was 
evinced not only by his lifelong devotion to his sister, but by 
his excessive fondness for the company of a few intimate friends. 
As we often see in an excitable nature not endowed with a con- 
stitution cajiable of sustaining much excitement, he hated bustle, 
agitation, change — all the associations of vigorous energy ; his 
feelings were all in favour of quiet and repose. He loved things 
that had been passively abandoned to the operations of nature- - 
tattered old books, crazy old houses, old-fashioned pumps and 
statues; he disliked brand-new books, and execrated modern 
improvements. Narrative, he said, teased him ; he had little 
conceru in the progress of events ; he loveil to hang ''''for the. 



WALTER LANDOR. 539 

tkoitsandtk time over some passage in old Burton, or one of his 
strange contemporaries." His sociability and his old habits led 
him to prefer the town to the country, and his whimsical humour 
to exaggerate this preference in the jireseiice of the Lakers ; but 
in the Uiwn his favourite haunts were suburban lanes and the 
quiet gardens of the Tem[)le; and he had a genuine longing for 
the "pretty pastoral walks in hearty, homely, loving Hertford- 
shire." Akin to his dislike of rigorous energy, was iiis fou'iness 
for oddities, for things that were not braced up by an effort to a 
conventional standard, but seemed as if they had whimsically 
followed their own sweet will — -"out-of-the-way humours and 
opinions — heads with some diverting twist in them " — " things 
quaint, irregular, out of the road of common sympathy," and 
particularly the o idities of authorshijj, such as " the beautiful 
obliquities of the Keligio Medici." He liked the "aititicial 
comedy" of Congreve and Wycherly, as a region "where no 
cold moral reigns," "out of wiiich our coxcomical moral sense 
is for a little transitory ease excluded." He wished people to 
enjoy in imagination the ctmiical invasions of strict morality, 
and professed for -himself that after "an airing beyond the 
diocese of the strict conscience," he " came back tu his cage 
j'.nd liis restraint the fresher and more healthy for it." With 
all Lamb's whims and oddities, the foundations of his being 
were serious and substantial. He was a most penetrating ob- 
server and critic; his eye was not easily divirted from the 
heart of a subject. Eeadprs of poetry are pre-eminently in- 
debted to him for his services in the work of exhuming the old 
dramatic writers of the Shakspearian age. " He threw," it has 
been said, " more and newer light upon the genuine meaning 
of the great masterpieces of the theatre than any other man; 
and yet we do not rem em' er a single instance in which his 
positions have been gainsaid." 

Walter Savage Landor (1775 - 1864), author of the poems 
'Gebir' and 'Count Julian,' and who, as Byron said, "culti- 
vated much jirivate renown in the shape of Latin veises," is by 
stmie authorities placed in the first rank among writers of prose. 
His life has recently been written with great minuteness by Mr 
John Forster. He was born in the year of the outbreak of the 
American War (1775), on the 30th January, the anniversary of 
the execution of Charles L From his youth up he gave evidence 
of an insubordinate spirit ; he had to quit Kngby, and subse- 
quently Oxford, in consequence of misdemeanours, aggravated 
by dogged defiance of authority. After his rustic ition from 
Oxford in tlie summer of 1794, he declined his father's desire 
that he should choose a profession, by way of having something 
to do; and being heir to considerable estates, [iref erred being 



510 FKOM 1820, 

put U]ion a yearly allowance, with liberty to travel where he 
pleased. His poem 'Gebir' was published in 1797; it was 
highly praised by Soutliey in the 'Grilical IJeview,' but it iiuide 
no impression on tlie general public. As he sympathised with 
the ;inti- uKmarchical enthusiasts of the period, his help was 
solicited for the current newspaper wnrfare, and he made several 
contributions to journals then supported by Coleridge and Soutliey. 
The death of his father in 1805 made him a wealthy man, anl for 
a year or two theieat'ter he lived chiefly at Bath in great splendour. 
In 1808 he suddenly set out for Spain to assist in the war of 
liberation, but soon quarrelled with some of his associates and 
came back again. Shortly after liis return, he sold his jiaternal 
estates, bought Llanthony in Monmouthshire, and married "a 
pretty little girl, of whom he seems literally to have had no other 
knowledge than that she had more curls on her head than any 
other girl in Bath." In 1812 ap})eai'ed his tragedy of 'Count 
Julian,' the legendary traitor who introduced the Moors into 
S[)ain. While Wilson was living in supreme happiness at Elleray, 
poor Landor at Llanthony was in a Tartarean broil of bitter 
quarrels with his tenants and his neighbours, the final result of 
which was his departure from England and his settlement in Italy 
in 1815. Twenty years he remained in Italy, during which his 
only productions worthy of note were the 'Imaginary Conversa- 
tions' (1824-29) and 'Pericles and Aspasia' (1835). Throughout 
this period his fractious temper involved him in frequent quarrels 
with various Florentine officials and others; and in 1835 an 
irreconcilable quarrel with his wife drove him back to England. 
He lived ciiiefly at Bath for twenty-one years, and published in 
1853 'Last Fruit off an Old Tree,' a volume containing a few 
more C(mversations, and miscellaneous odds and ends. In 1858 
he withdrew from England to escape an action for libel raised 
at the instance of a lady he had quarrelled with ; and spent the 
remaining six years of his life in Italy. — Landor, as De Quincey 
remarks, is one of those authors aliout whose personal appearance 
we have a special curiosity. He was, then, an erect, stout-set 
man, of middle height, with a broad head retreating in front 
but very full behind, fair-complexion ed and grey-eyed, wearing in 
later years a peculiarly venerable look from his grey hairs, broad 
bald forehead, and erect carriage. The headstrong, overbearing, 
quairelsome, ungregarious side of his character, is made apparent 
by the briefest outline of his social career. Towards his few friends 
he seems to have been generous and overflowingly affectii aiate. 
Yet even among friemls admitted to his intimacy he was so 
exacting and "touchy," that they iiever knew the moment when 
they might strike against a torpedo that should make an irre- 
parable breach. His most intimate friendships were states of 



\VILLIAM IIAZLITT. 5 1 1 

unstable eq'ulibrium. His prose writings are 1 setter known than 
his poetry: yet it is probably his poetry that is the nmst secure 
basis of his reputation. His crowning excellence is sublimity of 
conception : the character of Count Julian is his nia>ter[iiecc, and 
it is ranked by so sober a judge as De Quincey with the Satan 
of Milton and the Prometheus of Aeschylus. In his 'Imaginary 
Conversations,' as was to be expected fmm so wilful an egotist, 
dramatic exhibition of character is no part of their excellence. 
Some critics, indeed, profess to see a great deal of character ia 
some of the dialogues. But the concession is made that it is not 
impossible that in many cases he first wrote the opinions and then 
looked about for a passably consistent mouthpiece ; and in many 
cases personages are credited with opinions that they are very 
unlikely to have entertained. The ' Conversations ' are interest- 
ing not from their dramatic propriety or significance, but as the 
vehicles of Landor's own ofiinions. He does not attempt to 
imitate the style of literary interlocutois : in the dialogue be- 
tween Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Creville, Gi^ville talks the 
language of Sidney's ' Arcadia,' and Sidney the language of Walter 
Landor. In his prose style two points of excellence may be 
singled out — the aphoristic force of his general propositions, and 
the felicitous force of his imagery. In the opinion of many, his 
style has too much force. In addition to the vigour and occa- 
sional vehemence of the meaning, the minute observer will remark 
that the words are studiously chosen for em[ihatic articulation, 
containing an unusual proportion of energetic " labials," a choice 
doubtless apt and consistent, but, like all obtrusive arts, liable to 
be ovei'done.^ 

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), an eminent critic, born at ISIaid- 
stone, in Kent, was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was 
carefully educated by his father with a view to the same pro- 
fession. As he grew up, his own wishes did not ratify his father's 
choice, and at the age of seventeen he was jiermitted to change 
the direction of his studies, and to indulsje an ambition of becom- 
ing a great painter. He persevered in the study and practice of 
painting for several years, and is said to have been prevented from 
attaining eminence only by a too fastidious spirit of criticism, and 
a despair of working up to his high ideals. His first literary effort 
was a metaphysical work on the ' Principles of Human Action,' 

1 Landor is the chief of De Quincey's " orthogra])hic mutineers " (De Quincey'8 
Works, xiii. 95) : " As we are all of us crazy wht-n the wind fits in some par- 
ticular quarter, let not Mr Landor be angry with me for suggesting that he is 
outrageously crazy upon the one solitary subject of spelling." Landor's views 
about spelling and purity of language in general are to be found in the dialogua 
between Archdeacon Hare and Walter I andor in 'Last Kruit off an Old Tree,' 
an'' in two ' Imaginary "Conversations' between Johnson and Home Tooke. 



5 I :i FROM 1820. 

])ul)!i.s]ied in 1805, remarkable as advocating the disinterested side 
in liinnan nature. Fnmi that date he subsisted by literature. 
He wrote an abridgment of Tucker's 'Light of Nature' in 1807 ; 
compiled a selection of Parliamentary sjieeches, under the title of 
'The Eloquence of the British Senate,' in 1808; and did other 
"journey-work" for the booksellers. In 1813 he deliveied at 
the Ivussell Institution a series of lectures on English Philosophy; 
a fact worth mention, as showing that for many years the chief 
studies of the future crit c were philosophical. About this time 
he became connected with the press as a contributor of political 
and theatrical criticisms, some of which were afterwards worked 
up into the volumes ' Political Essays ' and ' A View of the English 
Stage.' He was first brought prominently into notice by his 
lectures at the Surrey Institution on the "English Poets" (1818), 
on the "English Couiic Writers" (1819). and on the "Dianiatic 
Literature of the Age of E izabeth " (1821). About the same 
time lippeared his ' Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.' His otlier 
priiicipal worfffe were — ' Table Talk,' 1821-22; the ' Spirit of the 
Age' (a series of criticisms on contemporaries, bitterly condemned 
by nearly all reviewers), 1825 ; the ' Plain Siieaker,' a collection 
of Essays, 1826 ; and his last and greatest performance, 'The Life 
of Napoleon,' 1828-30. During the last ten years of his life he 
was a frequent contributor to various periodicals — the ' London 
Mayazine,' the ' Edinburgh Review,' the ' New Monthly,' and the 
* Monthly.' He died on the i8th of September 1830. — " In person 
Mr Haziitt was of the middle size, with a handsome and eager 
countenance, worn by sickness and thought ; and dark hair which 
had curled stiffly over the temi)les, and was only of late years 
sprinkled with grey. His gait was slouching and awkward, and 
his dress neglected ; but when he began to talk he could not be 
mistaken for a common man. In the comj^any of persons with 
whom he was not familiar, his bashfulness was jiainful ; but when 
he became entirely at ease, and entered on a favourite topic, no 
one's conversation was ever more delightful." He was an excit- 
able man, of intense and vehement feelings, nursing and indulging 
excitement to dangerous excess. He did not criticise in cold blooil. 
The reviewers of his own time dwelt upon his intense love and 
admiration for great authors as one of his "noblest" qualifications 
for the ofii<*j of critic. " He did not square and measure out hi* 
judgmento by the pedantries of dry and lifeless propositions — his 
taste was not the creature of schools and canons, it was begotten 
(if Enthusiasm liy Thought." Critics who admired this qualifica- 
tion, as applied to the great men of former times, shai-ply resented 
its application in the 'Spirit of the Age' to the author's contem- 
poraries. Enthusiasm was then spoken of as " bad taste " and 
" affectation "; and poor Haziitt was told the bitter truth that it 



LEIGH HUNT. 54 3 

was his worst enemy. His criticisms of his contemporaries seem 
to us to be, taken all in all, neither more nor less just than his 
critici-inis of departed poets, comic writers, and dnunatists. In all 
his criticisms alike he strikes us as a man of extravagant sentiment 
and hyperbolical ex|)ression, widely read in philosophy and in 
general literature, a habitual and acute student of human char- 
acter, more alive to varieties of excellence than any of his critical 
contemporaries, excepting De Quincey and John Wilson, and 
more, perhaps, than even these, alive to what may be called 
varieties of mood. His judgment was liable to be "deflected" 
by intemperate feelin;^', generous or splenetic. His criticisms 
must be taken with some grains of allowance on this score before 
we appreciate their substantial body of sound disceTiiment. He 
oftrn puts things graphically and incisively ; but his composition 
strikes the general taste nf critics as wearing too much an appear- 
ance of effort, and straining too much at flashing effects. " Haz- 
litt," says De Quincey, " was not eloquent, because he was discon- 
tinuous. No man can be eloquent whose thoughts are abrupt, 
insulated, capricious, and non-sequacious. . . . Now Hazlitt's 
brilliancy is seen chiefly in sejiarate s[ilinterings of phrase or image 
which throw )ipon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment, 
but spread no deep suffusions of colour, and distribute no masses 
of mighty shadow. A flash, a solitary flash, and all is g(me." De 
Quincey ol)jects also to Hazlitt's habit of trite quotation, of orna- 
menting Lis pages with " tags of verse and 'cues' of rhyme." 

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), journalist, essay-writer, 
book-compiler, and poet, may be [ilaced with Hazlitt as another 
distinguished member of what was derisively termed "The Cock- 
ney School." He was the son of a West Indian lawyer, settled at 
Southgate in INliddlesex, and received his schooling at Christ's 
Hospital. His father published a collection of his verses in 1S02, 
under the title of ' Juvenilia,' when he was but eighteen — a col- 
lection which met with a much more favourable reception than 
Byron's 'Hours of Idleness,' puMished some five years later. 
'1 hroughout his life his aspirations and pursuits were exclusively 
literary. The short trial that was made of his business abilities 
in a law office, and subsequently in the War Office, could hardly 
be said to be an interruption. When he was little more than 
twenty he made a sensation as a dramatic critic in his brother's 
paper, the 'News.' In 1808 he joined with his brother in setting 
up the ' Examiner,' designed as a weekly organ for [lolitical views 
more advanced than were then current in the press. The attacks 
of the 'Examiner' upon the Government involved it in more than 
one prosecution for libel ; and in 1813 our author was indicted for 
certain sarcastic comments on the Prince Regent, and suflered ini' 



544 rnoM is2n. 

prisonment for two years, glorying in his bonds, and declining 
several offers fmm friends ti> pay his fine and procure his release. 
In 1816 his 'Story (if Ilimini' presented him to the public as a 
poet; and as he had, some years before, in his ' Feast of the Poets,' 
rather captiously insultal the whole of that irritable race, his per- 
formance was reviewed and himself reviled with the utmost spirit. 
In 1819-21, he imblished the 'Indicator,' a weekly series of essays 
on the model of the ' Spectator.' The most notorious event in liis 
life, next to his imprisonment for a political offence, was his con- 
nection Avith Lord Byron, lie set sail for Italy in 182 1 to assist 
Byron and Shelley in establishing the 'Liberal,' a projected new 
light in matters social, political, and reliuious ; but the scheme 
failed through want of congeniality among the collaborateurs ; and 
Hunt, after his return to England, })ublished ' Recollections of 
Lord Byron,' in which he tried to exculpate himself at the expense 
of his friend. He returned to England in 1825. For the remain- 
ing thirty- four years of his life he lived as a man of letters in 
London, the fruits of his pen being eked out by occasional con- 
tributions from his friends, and after 1847 by a Government 
pension of ^200, bestowed by Lord John Russell. He projected 
periodicals — the ' Companion ' (shortly after his return, a contin- 
uation of the 'Indicator'), the 'Tatler' (1S30-33), the 'London 
Journal' (1834), and wrote to periodicals already established; 
composed a fictitious autobiogra])hy of Sir Ralph Esher, a gentle- 
man of the Court of Charles II. (1832), a poem, 'Captain Sword 
and Captain Pen,' 1839, and a play, 'The Legend of Florence,' 
1840 ; and published various compilations, criticisms, and books 
of gossip — ■' Imagination and Fancy,' 1845; 'Wit and Humour,' 
1846; 'Stories from the Italian Poets,' 1846; ' Men, Women, and 
Books' (a collection from his periodical essays), 1847 j ' -^ J^^" <>f 
Honey fnmi Mount Hybla,' 1847; 'The Town,' 1848; 'Autobio- 
graphy,' 1850; 'The Religion of the Heart,' 1853; 'The Old 
Court Suburb,' 1855. He died on the 28th of August 1859.— He 
is described as a rather tall man, of dark complexion, with erect 
carriage, and engaging liveliness and suavity of address. " His 
hair \\ as black and shining, and slightly inclined to wave ; his 
head was high, his forehead straight and white, his eyes black and 
sparkling." The inner as well as the outer man differed consider- 
ably from the typical John Bull. He was ruled by sentiment. His 
capacities for business Avere of the poorest order. He had no sense 
of the value of money, and w ould often have been in great distress 
had not the amiability of his character procured him relief from 
the generosity of his friends. As a youth he was spoiled by the 
praise of his precocity ; overweeningly self-complacent, he sat in 
judgment with a patronising air upon his elders and superiors, 
and, meaning no harm in the world, made hosts of enemies on 



JOHN WII.SOX. 515 

every side. When his eyes were opened to the unconscious offen- 
siveness of his behaviour, he niipeared in a more amiable aspect. 
His ' Autobiography ' is brimming with expressions of goodwill to 
all mankind, and frank confession <if youthful offences. His phil- 
anthropic sentiment was overflowing. Uncle Toby was his ideal 
— "divine Uncle Toby." "He who created Uncle Toby was 
the wisest man since the days of Shakspeare." "As long as the 
character of Toby Shandy finds an echo in the heart of man, the 
heart of man is noble." In point of style, his model was Addison. 
In simplicity and felicitous grace of expression he may lie con- 
trasted with tiie more robust and careless vigour predominant in 
the early days of the 'Edinburgh Review' and ' Blackwood.' He 
particularly excels in graceful touches of humorous caricature. 

John Wilson, " Christopher North " (1785-1854), was tlie son 
of a prosperous manufacturer in Paisley. When he was six or 
seven years old, he was placed under the care of the minister 
of the neighbouring parish of Mearns, and dis] 'laved from the 
first his singular union of muscular vigour with love of intel- 
lectual distinction. Jack was anything but a dull boy; his en- 
thusiasm for angling and other sports,^ and his lattling youthful 
eloquence, were no less conspicuous than his quickness in book- 
learning. He studied at Glasgow, and subsequently at Oxford. 
At Glasgow he carried off the fiist prize in the Lugic class ; and at 
Oxford, besides being distinguished as a boxer and as the best far- 
leaper of his day in England, he was said to have passed for his 
degree "the most illustrious examination within the memory of 
man." He left Oxford in 1807, and soon after, having purchased 
the beautiful residence of Elleray on the banks of the Windermere, 
he married, and lived there for several years in Utopian health and 
happiness, surrounded by the finest of scenery, and vaiying his 
poem-wiiting and halcyon peace with walking excursions and jovial 
visits from friends that, like himself, entered with zest into the 
hearty enjoyment of life. During this period he wrote his 'Isle 
of Palms,' a beautiful reflection of the soft passage of his days. In 
181 5, in consequence of pecuniary embarrassment, brought on by 
the misfortunes of tlie trustee of his father's jiroperty, he was 
under the necessity of choosing a profession, and decided for the 
Scottish bar. He made no effort to secure a practice. In 1820 
he was appointed Professor of Moral PhiIoso[>hy in Edinburgh. 
The duties of this Chair he discharged till 1851, when he retired 
upon a pension of ^300, all the more gratifying as a mark of 
public respect that it was bestowed by his political enemies. But 
the most l^rilliant side of his life was his activity in connection 
with ' Blackwood's Magazine,' which, after a short tentative flight, 
^ See Recreations of Christopher North. 
2 M 



54 G FKOM 1820. 

was in 1817 fairly started in its present chara( ter with " Cliris- 
tophei- North" as its leading contributor. Whun Wilson gave up 
his residence at Elleray, he was, writes Professor Ferrier,^ "after 
sundry pleasant overtures from JeftVey, and the conipo4tion of one 
eloquent article on 'Childe Harold' for the 'Edinburgh Review,' 
induced finally to cement a perpetual treaty with Mr Blackwood, 
and to act, for months and years, as the animating soul of his 
celebrated Magazine." It was not, however, by a jump, or even 
rapiilly, that Wilson attained to the full command of his jiowers, 
or the Magazine to a lucrative circulation. It was estahlished in 
181 7 ; but it wns not until 1825 that that brilliant succession of 
articles from Wilson's pen began to appear, which brought fame 
to him and a shoal of subscribers to the Magazine. For the ten 
following years, his industry never flagged. About 1836 it became 
somewhat intermittent, although, until near the close of his life, it 
was still powerfully exerted. "Dies Boreales " were the last con- 
tributions from his pen to ' Blackwood's Magazine.' ^ All his prose 
writings made their first appearance in ' Maga,' as he delighted to 
call the Magazine ; after ids death the principal of them were 
collected and published by the Messrs Blackwood under the editor- 
ship of his son-in-law Professor Ferrier. — Tlie numerous floating 
traditions of "Christopher North's" commanding personal appear- 
ance and physical prowess have always made him one of the most 
popular of literary characters. The graceful dignity of his carriage, 
and the length of limb and peculiar formation of heel that gave him 
his extraordinary superiority as a far-leaper, are recorded with 
characteristic minuteness in De Quincey's sketch. l)e Quincey 
also dwells upon the popularity of his manners — his frank, open 
affability to all comers, his "infinite gamut" of acquaintance from 
college "Don" to groom, ostler, and stable-boy. His writings 
were no less popular than his person. As a critic he did not pos- 
sess De Quincey 's subtle power of entering into characters different 
from his own (in that respect De Quincey probably stood alone 
among his contemporaries) ; but his sympathies were so broad that 
it is not easy to define their limits. His strong pleasure in natural 
scenery, the native susceptibility of his eye to colour and form, 
gave him a wider compass than Jeffrey, and was the secret of his 
enthusiastic advocacy of Wordsworth, as a corresponding deficiency 
was the secret of Jeffrey's no less earnest depreciation. When we 
compare his review of Lord Tennyson's early poems with Lockhart's 

1 In Mackenzie's Imperial Dictionary of Bio,<:;raphy. 

2 Among the early coiitribntors to this Maq-azine, which introdnced a new era 
In periodical writing, being the tirst parent of all the magazines that now swim 
the literaiy stream, were John Gilison Loelchart, Captain Hamilton (anthor of 
'Cyril Thornton,' a lirother of Sir Williaii Hamilton), John (Jalt (author of 
'Annals of the Parish'), Mrs Hemans, David M. Moir ^'' Delta"), Sir Archibald 
Alison, De Quincey, and other well-known names. 



JOHN GIBSON LOCKIIAKT. 04 7 

review of the same publication in the ' Quarterly,' we see that this 
nature-interest, this additional " bump " or bum})S, overbalanced his 
repugnance to the admixture of the "Cockney" element, and the 
pseudo-metaphysical "drivel," that irreconcilably offended his early 
friend and associate. As regards Wilson's style, it has been said 
by Mr Hallaai that "his eloquence is like the rush of mighty 
waters." He greatly admired Jeremy Taylor; and while, from 
temperament, he does not display the same habitual breathless 
eagerness in the accumulation of words, but pours out his full 
eloquence with less appearance of excitement, he often reminds us 
of Taylor's manner in his way of following out picturesque simil- 
itudes. Comparing them upon one point only, and disregard- 
ing other characteristics, we should say that of the two Taylor is 
the more rhetorical, and Wilson the more eloquent : Taylor rather 
accumulates his wealth of expression upon given themes ; Wilson 
flows out spontaneously and often somewhat irrelevantly to the 
subject in hand, concerning what strongly interested him in real 
life : Taylor can flexibly bring his powers to bear upon any sub- 
ject ; Wilson, although from the width of Lis interests the distinc- 
tion is not glaringly obtrusive, is copious only when he happens 
to strike a plentiful spring in his own nature. With all Wilson's 
Nimrod force and abounding animal spirits, perhaps his richest 
and most original vein of expression is connected with his love of 
peaceful beauties in natural scenery. A very high tribute both 
to his judgment and to his powers of illustration is paid by De 
Quincey when he says that from Wilson's contributions to ' Black- 
wood's Magazine,' and more especially from his meditative ex- 
aminations of great poets ancient and modern, 2l Jioiilegium might 
be compiled of thoughts more profound and more gorgeously 
illustrated than exist elsewhere in human composition. 

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), already mentioned in con- 
nection with 'Blackwood's Magazine,' was editor of the 'Quarterly 
Keview ' for more than a quarter of a century, from 1^26 to 1853. 
The son of a Scotch parish minister in Lanarkshire, he was a dis- 
tinguished student at Glasgow College, and at the close of his cur- 
riculum was presented to one of the Snell exhibitions for Balliol 
College, Oxford. In the final examination at Oxford in 18 13, he 
took a first-class in classics. After a visit to Germany, in the 
course of which he made the acquaintance of Goethe, he fixed his 
residence in Edinburgh, and was called to the Scotch bar in 1816. 
Like several other young lawyers of the same date, his profession was 
more literature than law. He co-operated with Wilson in the inau- 
guration of ' Blackwood's Magazine' in 181 7. He had a principal 
hand in the famous ' Chaldee Manuscript.' ^ In 1819 he published 

1 This pungent production appeared in the seventh number of 'Blackwood's 
Magazine,' the first number contributed to by Wilson and Lockhart. It was 



548 FROM 1820. 

' Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' satirical sketches of Edinburgh men 
of the time. In the following year he married the eldest daughter 
of Sir Walter Seott, who titted up for the reception of the youthful 
jiair the little cottage of Chiefswood, near Abbotsford. Here he 
produced in rapid succession his ' Metrical Translations of Spanish 
l>ailads,' and his four novels, 'Valerius,' 'Adam Blair,' 'Reginald 
Dalton,' and ' 2*Iatthew Wald.' From 1826, when he accepted the 
editorship of the 'Quarterly Review,' he resided in London ; and 
besides his editorial duties and his own contributions to the peri- 
odical, which were upwards of a hundred in number, he found 
time to write his ' Life of Burns' for 'Constable's Miscellany' 
(1827), his 'Life of Napoleon' for 'Murray's Family Library' 
(1829), and his greatest work, the 'Life of Scott,' the last volume 
of which appeared in 1838. — Lockhart was a thin, dark, erect 
figure, proud and reserved in general society, and regarded with 
some fear on account of his sarcastic ways ; but among his chosen 
com|ianions, at least in his earlier and happier years, loved for his 
exuberance of animal spirits and his irrepressible flow of wit and 
humour. The kindliness that was not distiil>uted groniiscuously, 
made itself felt all the more strongly within the chosen circle. He 
made numerous enemies, especially during his career in Edinburgh, 
by the tormenting force of his ridicule, by his ingenuity in driving 
rusty nails into the most vulnerable parts of his victims ; yet more 
acts of generous kindness and high integrity are recorded of him 
tlian can be placed to the credit of many men of more philan- 
thropic professions and greater general suavity of manner. As 
a critical potentate "he was kind and considerate towards un- 
jiretending merit, ready to recognise and welcome real talent in 
friend or foe, and severe only where presumption went hand in 
hand with ignorance." Much of his power as a writer depended 
upon his ])enetrating knowledge of character. The most notable 
feature in his novels and tales is the development of thought, feel- 
ing, and purpose, under the influence of circumstances : he loves 
particularly to play upon natural mistakes, and the consequences of 
natural mistakes, in the interpretation of appearances. His most- 
admired articles in the ' Quarterly ' are biograi)hical. Throughout 
his life the study of character seems to have been his prevailing 
study : we trace the natural bent towards it in his boyish carica 
tares, and we have the first memorable fruits of it in ' Peter's 
Letters.' The 'Life of Burns' is a good specimen of his power: 
when we com])are this work with Dr Currie's, we are most forcibly 
struck with Lockhart's skill in weaving out of crude material 
a coherent narrative of characteristic incidents. No student of 

written in the style of the Old Testament. Its clever personalities made such a 
Rensation tliat it was withdrawn from the second edition of the number. (Se« 
^Vil^.ous W orl>.b, \ol. iv.j 



JOHN GIBSON LOCKIIART. 549 

biography can afford to overlook Lockhart. Apart from his skill 
in choosing significant circumstances, he is peculiarly distinguished 
by his faithful adherence to reality : his biograi)hies are remark- 
ably free from the distortions of romance and hero-worship. He 
objected on several grounds to the writing of the lives of persons 
recently deceased; but he held that if "contemporaneous bio- 
graphy," as he called it, is to be jtermitted, the biographers should 
be peculiarly careful not to make in favour of the hero suppressions 
that might do injustice to other persons concerned. It was prob- 
ably in pursuance of this principle that he made revp.lations ccn- 
cerniiig Scott which extreme admirers of the poet would rather he 
had left unsaid. Lockhart's is not a studied, finished style, but he 
had a great mastery of language, and is exceedingly fresh and 
varied in his diction. His characteristic qualities are kaan incisive 
force, and sarcastic exuberant wik 



INDEX OF PEINCIPAL NAMES. 









PAGE 








PAO« 


Addison 377-392 


Butler, Samuel, . • • 306 


Alison, Hev. A., , 






519 


Butter, . . , • . 263 


„ Sir A., 






528 




Andrewes, . . 






255 


Camden, . • * • 235 


Arbnthnot, • ■ 






408 


Campbell, John, . * . 437 


Asiharn, . ■ 






197 


Caiiipbell, George, . . . 474, 478 


Asliiiiole, . . 






305 


Caj 'grave 187 


Atterbury, . . 






401 


Carlyle, . 


( 131-180, 44, 191, 
\ 195. 328 


Aubrey, . . 






343 












Carte, . 


437 


BAroN, Francis, 






. 239-255 


Cartwright, 






233 


BaivtT, . 






259 


Cavendish, 






193 


Barclay, 






339 


Ca.xton, . 






. . 187 


Barrow, . 






336 


Chalmers, 






523 


Baxter, . , 






299 


Chandler, 






404 


Beattie, . . 






478 


Charleton, 






344 


Bellenden, . , 






193 


Cliaucer, 






184 


Bentham, . . 






517 


Cheke, . 






196 


Bentley, 






407 


Chill ingworth, 






258 


Berkeley, . . 






406 


Chubb, . 






429 


Bemers, Juliana, 






188 


Clarendon, . 






304 


Berners, Lord, 






189 


Clarke, . 






402 


Birch, . 






438 


Cobbett, 






520 


Black well, . 






438 


Coleri(lc;e, 






519 


Bliiir, . 






479 


Collins, . 






403 


Blount, . 






344 


Conybeare, 






429 


Bolincjbroke, . 






410 


Cotton, . , 






235 


Boswell, . 






485 


Covefdale, , 






194 


Bower, . . 






437 


COWLKY, 






. 289-298 


Boyle, . 






344 


Cranmer, , 






194 


Brown, John. 






439 


Cudworth, . 






341 


Hi own, Pe'er, , 






404 


Cumberland, . 






341 


Brown, Tlioinas, 






5'6 










Browne. Sir T., 






307 


Daniel, . , 






235 


Budgell, 






408 


DiaoK, . , 






• 347-301 


Bunyan, . 






, 301 


Dekker, . 






238 


Bb'HKE, . 

Burleigh, 






, 440-460 
238 


De Quincet, 




( 3T-7'''. 109. 137, 
( 13^, 379,488,546 


Burnet, Gilbert, 






34' 


Di-by, . 




309 


Burnet, Thomas, 






339 


Disraeli, T., 




> • • 520 


Burton, . 






, 262 


Dofldridge, 




432 


Butler, Josejih, 






430 


Doune, . 






255 



INDEX OF PKINCIPAL KAMES. 



551 



Dryden 


332-336 


Dugilale, . . . 


305 


Earle, 


306 


Echanl 


407 


Edwards, . . , . 


434 


Ellwood, ... 


340 


Elyot, 


192 


Erskine, . . . < 


433 


Evelyn 


342 


Fabyan, . . . < 


188 


Feirtham, . . . , 


306 


Field, 


255 


Fortescue, . . . . 


186 


Foster, James, . , , 


432 


Foster, John, . . 


514 


Fox, George, . . . , 


301 


Foxe, John, . . . 


196 


Francis, 


488 


Franklin, . . . ■ 


438 


Fuller, , . , . 


264-274 


Gauden, . . • 


311 


Gibbon, .... 


483 


Gillies, .... 


520 


Goldsmith, . . , 


461-473 


Guthrie, . . , 


437 


Hakluyt, 


1 236 


Hale 


304 


Hales, .... 


259 


Halifax 


> 344 


Hall, Edward, 


• 192 


Hall, Josejih, , , 


257 


Hall, Robert, . . 


• 504-513 


Hallani 


527 


Hamilton, . . . 


530 


Harrington, . . , 


313 


Harris, James, . , 


• 439 


Harris, William, . . 


437 


Harrison, . . . 


199 


Hartley, 


434 


Hazlitt 


541 


Hayward, Sir John, 


234 


Hay ward, A. C, . 


489. 536 


Herbert ( of Cherbury), . 


• 260 


Hervey, James, . . 


432 


Hervey, Lord, . . 


437 


Heylin 


• 306 


Hoadley, ... 


• 402 


Hobbes, • • • 


311 


Holiiished, . . , 


198 


Hooke 


437 


Hooker, John, . , 


> 199 


Hooker, Richard, , 


213-227 


Horsley, . . , 


473 


Howell, .... 


305 


Hughes, .... 


• 408 


Hume, . . , , 


• 434 


Hunt, Leigh, . . , 


543 



Hutcheson, . . . 


433 


Hyde (Clarendon), . 


30-1 


James I., . . , 


238 


Jettiey, 


532 


Johnson, 


. 413-428 


Jonson, I3en, 


260 


" Junius," ... 


487 


Karnes, Lord, . , 


> 479 


Kennet, 


> 4^7 


Kennicot, . . , 


432 


Knolles, . . . , 


23s 


Lamb, .... 


537 


Landor, . . 


539 


Lardner, 


431 


Latimer, 


194 


Law, Edmund, 


432 


Law, William, . . . 


432 


Leland, John, 


192 


Leland, Dr John, . 


431 


Leslie, .... 


404 


L' Estrange, . . 


343 


Lithgow, . . 


262 


Locke, .... 


340 


Lockhart, . . . 


547 


Lowth, 


432 


Lyly, .... 


227-232 


(■77-130, 172, 


177, 252, 


MaCAULAY, < 331, 342, 


419. 485. 


( 4ti6, 527 




Mackenzie, 


342 


Mackintosh, . , , 


521 


Malory, . . , , 


189 


Malthus, . . . , 


519 


Mandeville, Ber. de, . 


404 


Mandeville, Sir John, . 


183 


JLanley, Mrs, . , 


408 


Marprelate, . . . 


233 


May, .... 


305 


Melmoth, . . . . 


438 


Middleton, . , , 


437 


Mill, James, . . , 


5-^5 


Milner, Isaac, . , 


514 


Milner, Joseph, . , 


514 


Milton, .... 


310 


Mitford, . . . . 


520 


Monboddo, . , 


491 


More, Henry, . , 


309 


More, Sir T,, 


189 


Morgan, . , 


429 


Morton, . , , 


25s 


Needham, . . , 


314 


Newton, Sir Isaac, . , 


344 


Newton, Thomas, . 


432 


Norris, .... 


4 '-i 


North 


198 



552 



INDEX OF PRINCIPAL NAMES. 



Overbury, 
Owen, . 

Palet, 

Parr, . 

Parsons, 

Pearson, 

Pecock, 

Peiin, . 

Pepys, 

Porteous, 

Potter, . 

Price, 

Prideaux, 

Priestley, 

Psahnauazar, 

Purchas, 

Raleigh, 
Ray, 
Raid, . 
Ricardo, 
Robertson, 
Rogers, . 
Rutherford, 
Rymer, 

Sale, 

Sanderson, 

Sandys, 

Saville, 

Seeker, 

Selden, 

Sliaftesbnry 

Sherlock, Thomas, 

Sherlock, William, 

Siilney, Algeriiou, 

Sidney, Sir P., 

Simeon, 

Smith, Adam, 

Smith, Sydney, 

Smollett, . 

South, • • 



238 
300 

492-504 
514 
233 
299 
186 
339 
342 
474 
407 

477 
407 

477 
437 
236 

236 
345 
474 
519 
481 
194 
3^-4 
343 

437 
299 
262 
344 
432 
259 
405 
404 

338 

314 

200-213 

513 
480 

534 
436 
338 



Speed, . , , 


234 


Spelman, , , 


235 


Sprat, . . . 


338 


Stanihurst, . . 


199 


Steele, . , 


, . 392-400 


Stewart, . . 


516 


Stilliiigfleet, . . , 


337 


Stow, . . . . 


234 


Strypo, 


407 


Stukeley, 


438 


Swift, . . . 


. 361-377 


Taylor, . . 


. 274-289 


Temple, . , . 


. 3i6-:i32 


Tillotson, . . 


337 


Tiiitlal, , . 


404 


Toland, 


403 


Tooke, 


490 


Trevisa, . . 


186 


Tucker, , . 


476 


Tyudale, . . 


193 


Ussher, • , , 


«S9 


Wakefield, . 


. . 515 


Walpole, , , 


4B6 


Walton, 


309 


Warburton, . . 


431 


Watson, . . 


51S 


Watts, 


432 


Wesley, . , 


433 


Whitefield, . 


433 


Whitstift, 


• 232 


Wicliffe, 


184 


Wilkins, . . 


309 


Wilson, Arthur, , 


305 


Wilson, John, . 


545 


Wilson, Thomas, . 


197 


Wollaston, . , 


405 


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ADVERTISEMENTS 



10 HIGHER ENGLISH. 

M into' a Manual of English Prose Literature. 

Designed maiuly to sliosv characteristics of style. By William JVIinto, 
M.A., Froiessor ot Logic auii JLUglisu Literature iu tlie Uuiversity of 
Aberdeeu, Scotlaud. iJiuo. Clotu. 5(itj pages. Mailing price, ;tPl.(J5; 
for iutroductiou, ;tfl-5U; allowance, 40 cents. 

rpiIE inaiu design is to assist in directing students in English 
composition to the merits and defects of the principal writers 
of prose, enabling them, in some degree at least, to acquire the one 
and avoid the other. The Introduction analyzes style : elements 
of style, qualities of style, kinds of composition. Part First gives 
exhaustive analyses of De Quincey, Macaulay, and Carlyle. These 
serve as a key to all the other authors treated. Part Second takes 
up the prose authors in historical order, from the fourteenth cen- 
tury up to the early part of the nineteenth. 



Hiram Corson, Prof. English Lit- 
erature, Cornell Universiti/ : With- 
out going outside of this book, an ear- 
nest student could get a knowledge 
of English prose styles, based on the 
soundest principles of criticism, such 
as he could not get in any twenty 
volumes which I know of. 

Katherine Lee Bates, Prof, of 
Enr/U.'ih, Wdlesley College : It is of 
sterling value. 

John M. Ellis, Prof, of Enr/lish 
Literature, Ohcrlin Coller/e : I am 
using it for reference with great in- 



terest. The criticisms and comments 
on authors are admirable — the best, 
on the whole, that I have met with 
in any text-book. 

J. Scott Clark, Pi-of. of Rhetoric, 
Sin'ciciise University : W^e have now 
given Minto's English Prose a good 
trial, and I am so much pleased that 
I want some more of the same. 

A. W. Long, Wofford College, Spar- 
tanhnrff, S.C: I have used Minto's 
English Poets and English Prose the 
past year, and am greatly pleased 
with the results. 



The Introduction to Minto's English Prose. 

44 pages. 12mo. Paper, 15 cents. 

Reprinted in this form especially for the use of the C. L. S. C. 

Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets, 

from Chaucer to Shirley. 

By William Minto, M.A., Professor of Logic and English Literature 
in the Universitv of Aberdeen. Scotland. 12mo. Cloth, xi + 382 pages. 
Mailing price, $1.65; for introduction, f 1.50; allowance, 40 cents. 

rPHE chief objects of the author are: (1) To bring into clear 
light the characteristics of the several poets ; and (2) to trace 
how far each was influenced by his literary predecessors and his 
contemporaries. 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



11 



Selections in English Prose from Elizabeth to 

Victoria. 1580-1880. 

By mail, $1.05 ; for iutroduction: ^1^0. ^ '^^ ^^^''^' 

'prilS work includes selections from Lyly, Sidney, Hooker, Bacon, 
Ben Jonson, Browne, Fuller, Milton, Clarendon, Jeremy Taylor 
Cowley Te.nple, Dryden, Defoe, Swift, Addison, Steele, Bolinc^' 
broke Johnson Hume, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, Scott, Southed, 
Colendge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Hunt, Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle, and 
Macaulay. The selections are accompanied by such explanatory 
notes as have been deemed necessary, and will average some twenty 
pages each The object is to provide students with the texts them- 
selves of the most prominent writers of English prose for the past 
three hundred years in selections of sufficient length to be charac- 
teristic of the author, and, when possible, they are complete works 
or sections o works. The book will serve as a companion volume 
to Mintos il/a.,,aZ of English Prose Literature, or may be used in 
connection with any other manual of- English literature. 



J. M. Hart, Prof, of Ertf/Ush, Cor- 
nell University : So far as I can see 
at a first glance, it seems just what 
I need. . . . The hook promises me 
great comfort. 

T. W. Hunt. Prof of Enqlish, 
Princeton (Jollcje : I find in it that 
critical discrimination and keen lit- 
erary insight which I expected to 
find in a work from Profes.wr Gar- 
nett. I am sure that it will be of 
practical service to all those who 
have to do with the study and 
teaching of our English prose. 

Louise M. Hodgkins, Prof, of 
Ewilisli, Wdleslctj College: It well 
supplements Minto, and well illus- 
trates English thought from Eliza- 
beth to Victoria. ... It is a lino 
book of selections, and I shall use 
it in my work. 



F. B. Gummere, Prof, of Enqlish, 
Ilaverford Colleue : I like the plan, 
tlie selections, and the making of the 
book. 

^ James E. Truax, Prof of Ew/lish, 
Union Coller/e : It is a welcome ar- 
rival. Hitherto I have been com- 
pelled to send the students to the 
library for assignments in connec- 
tion with Minto. Henceforth it is 
possible to put an alcove into the 
hands of each student, in the sliaiie 
of this timely volume, and to relieve 
I him from many inconveniences that 
necessarily belonged to the other 
method. 

H. N. Ogden, West Virginia Uni- 
versiti/ : The book fulfils my expec- 
tations in every respect, and will 
become an indisjiensable help in the 
work of our senior English class. 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 15 

The Best Elizabethan Plays. 

Edited with an lutroduction by William R. Thayer. 12mo. Cloth. 
Oil pages. By mail, $1.40; lor introductioii, $1.25. 

rpiIE selection comprises The Jew of Malta, by Marlowe ; TJie 
A Icheniist, by Ben Jonson ; Pidlaster, by Beaumont and Fletclier ; 
The Ttvo Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher and Shakespeare ; and llie 
Duchess of Malf, by Webster. It thus affords not only the best 
specimen of the dramatic work of each of the five Elizabethan 
poets who rank next to Shakespeare, but also a general view of the 
development of English drama from its rise in Marlowe to its last 
strong expression in Webster. The necessary introduction to the 
reading of each play is concisely given in tlie Preface. Great care 
has been used in expurgating the text. 



Felix E. Schelling, Professor of 
English, University of Pennsyl- 
vania : This has proved invaluable 
to me in my Seminar. All profes- 
sors of English literature must wel- 
come such intelligent and scholarly 
editions of our enduring classics. 



Charles F. Richardson, Prof, of 
Eii(/lish, Dartmouth College: The 
book is an excellent one, intelligently 
edited, equipped with brief and sen- 
sible notes, and introduced by a 
preface of real critical insight. Alto- 
gether, it is well fitted for college use. 



Five Short Courses of Reading in English Utera- 

ture. 

With Biographical and Critical References. By C. T. Winchester, Pro- 
fessor of English Literature in Wesleyan University. Sq. Kimo. Cloth. 
V + 99 pages. Mailing price, 45 cents ; for introduction, 40 cents. 

nPHIS little book lays out five short courses of reading from the 
most prominent writers in pure literature of the last three cen- 
turies, beginning with Marlowe and ending with Tennyson. Each 
of these courses is followed by a supplementary course, somewhat 
longer, for those who have time for more extended reading ; so that 
the shorter and longer courses, taken together, represent with con- 
siderable fulness the progress of our literature in its best specimens 
from the Elizabethan period to the present day. The book contains 
also information as to the best editions for student use, with extended 
and well chosen lists of critical and biographical authorities. 

John F. Genung, Prof, of Rhetoric, liar satisfaction to be guided through 
Amherst Coll., anth. of Practical Ele- the great highway of English Litera- 
ments of Rhetoric, etc, : It is a pecu- ture by a teacher so competent. 



16 HIGHER ENGLISH. 

Si/nopsis of English and /I men can Literature. 

By G. J. Smith, Instructor in Enj^lish, Washington (D.C.) High School. 
Svo. Cloth. 125 pages. By mail, 90 cents ; lor introduction, 80 cents. 

/^NE finds here in every case the author's full name, the dates 
of birth and death, the class of writers to which he belongs, 
the chronological place of that class in tlie development of litera- 
ture, his most important works, his most distinguished contem- 
poraries, the leading events of the time, and, in most cases, a few 
clear words of explanation or criticism. The general characteris- 
tics of the various periods are briefly stated. Now that our litera- 
ture is studied so commonly, not from a single text-book, but by 
reading the authors, such a general survey as this is very necessary. 



W. B. Chamberlain, Prof, of 
Rhetoric, Oberlin College : Its clear- 
ness, compactness, and readiness for 
reference must make it one of tlie 
most useful tools for either teacher 
or student. It gives a vast amount 



of most valuable information in the 
most economical manner possible. A 
very valuable feature is its correla- 
tion of literary with political and 
general historical events. I regard 
it as a decided success. 



S/iaf^espeare's Traqecfc/ of Ham let 

For the use of Colleges, High Schools, Academies, and Clubs. By Car- 
roll Lewis Maxcy, A.B., Associate Principal and Instructor in Eng- 
lish, Troy (N.Y.) Academy. Square Kimo. Cloth. 200 pages. Mail- 
ing price, 50 cents; for introduction, 45 cents. 

TT is believed that previous editions of Shakespeare have not 
infrequently impeded real progress by an excess of philological 
and textual criticism. The student is here brought to a complete 
analysis of the plot and a thorough and appreciative familiarity 
with the tragedy by a series of clear and careful questions covering 
every circumstance of the play. The work pi-oposed necessitates 
the thoughtful reading of every scene. A very few notes have been 
added to explain passages which would otherwise be unintelligible. 
The most famous quotations are grouped at the end of each act. 
There have been added selections from the leading Shakespearean 
commentators bearing upon the development of the plot and upon 
the poet's design in the delineation of certain of the characters. 

The Piiilosopiiy of American Literature. 

By Greenough White, A.M. 12mr>. Flexible cloth, iv + 66 pages. 
By mail, 35 cents; for introduction, 30 cents. 






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